Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin Reserves Seat For Space Ferry

Sergey Brin, co-founder of the search-engine powerhouse Google, has expressed his willingness to visit space, and for the purpose he has paid $5 million to Space Adventures Ltd., the world's leading space experiences company, to reserve a seat on a future flight.

Space Adventures, a Virginia-based space tourism outfit which has sent five previous wealthy executives to the space station since 2001, confirmed Wednesday that it will arrange the space trip for Brin, and its new client has paid it $5 million to be a passenger.

The 35-year-old billionaire will board a private Soyuz spacecraft with Space Adventures reserving two of the three seats. A Russia astronaut will pilot the spacecraft that will be launched by the Russian federal space agency in the second half of 2011.

This is not the first time, any wealthy tech entrepreneur is attracted to space ferry rather Microsoft’s co-founder Paul Allen and Amazon.com’s billionaire founder Jeff Bezos are also investing in commercial spaceflight.

The private space exploration company said that Brin will join an Explorer's Club in Manhattan, an exclusive club of the super-rich who have used their fortunes for the ultimate in adventure travel.

"I am a big believer in the exploration and commercial development of the space frontier, and am looking forward to the possibility of going into space," Brin said in a statement. "Space Adventures helped open the space frontier to private citizens and thus pave the way for the personal spaceflight industry. The Orbital Mission Explorers Circle enables me to make an immediate investment while preserving the option to participate in a future spaceflight."

According to Eric Anderson, founder of Space Adventures, Brin's trip will cost more than $35 million, and his $5 million investment will serve as a down-payment on his two-week voyage to space station, during which he'll orbit the earth about 150 to 200 times. Brin will carry out a mission, such as pharmaceutical testing or experiments on computer circuit boards.

Space Adventures launched the world's first privately funded space mission in 2001. Since then the company has sent five wealthy people into outer space. Dennis Tito, an American investment advisor became the first tourist after his voyage to station in 2001, followed by the South African internet millionaire Mark Shuttleworth who flew in 2002. Gregory Olsen, chief executive officer of Princeton, New Jersey-based Sensors Unlimited went to space in 2004, while Anousheh Ansari, the Iranian-born chairwoman of Prodea Systems, visited the station last year.

Charles Simonyi, the 58-year-old billionaire of Hungary, became the world’s fifth paying tourist after fulfilling his lifelong dream of space travel in 2007. The US software mogul is one of the 400 richest Americans and ranks 891 on the Forbes list of billionaires, with a $1 billion fortune.

Now, Richard Garriot, son of NASA astronaut Owen Garriot and the creator of the Ultima video games, is set to become the sixth space traveler. Garriot has paid $35 million to Space Adventures for his seat. He is to enter a Soyuz TMA-13 aircraft with the Russian space agency in October and travel to the International Space Station, floating in orbit 350 km above Earth.

Google, which has a close relationship with NASA, has sponsored its own space research program, called Google Lunar X Prize, a $25 million award for landing an unmanned space vehicle on the moon.

"There's nothing we love more than ambitious research with world-changing potential, and space exploration and research have long produced much of the scientific community's most ambitious, even audacious work," the Internet search giant says on its Web site.

Early this month, Google has also signed a 40-year lease agreement with NASA to develop a new high-technology campus at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. Under the terms of the agreement, the Internet company will build up to 1.2 million square feet (about 0.11 square kilometers) of offices, research and development space, company housing, and recreation on 42.2 acres (about 0.17 square kilometers) of the former Moffett Field property, for which it will pay an initial rent of 3.66 million U.S. dollars a year to NASA.