If you have an extremely large amount of money floating around, pun intended, you can do this.

Since the first privately financed spaceflight jump-started a sluggish industry two years ago, more than a dozen companies have begun developing rocket powered space vehicles to transport run of the mill rich people out of the atmosphere.

Numerous private companies will commence building their prototype vehicles this summer with plans to test-fly them as early as next year. If all goes as planned, the first space tourist could hitch a galactic joy ride late next year or 2008, albeit approval by federal regulators.

Unlike the Cold War space race between the U.S. and Soviet Union that sent satellites into orbit and astronauts to the moon; financed by their governments or public tax dollars, this competition is bankrolled by entrepreneurs whose fierce competition one day could make a blast into space economical enough for the average Joe.

At least for the time being, commercial space travelers remain as a private club. Over the past few years, three space tourists have paid a reported $20 million each to ride aboard a Russian rocket and rendezvous with the orbiting international space station.

A fourth would-be space tourist, Lance Bass from the former boy band ‘N Sync, did astronaut training but wasn’t able to supply the needed money for the trip.

People who made it endured about a week weightless and described the experience as “paradise” and “wondrous”.  The most thrilling part for millionaire U.S. scientist Gregory Olsen, who lifted off last year, was viewing the swirling Earth from the dark of space.

Prospective prices for the next round of personal spaceflights aren’t so expensive: A seat aboard one of the in blueprint commercial spaceships will fetch boarding passes from $100,000 to $250,000. Entrepreneurs expect the price tag to drop as the market matures.

Tourists will get what they pay for.

Instead of days in space, the commercial spaceships under development will reach only suborbital space, a region about 60 miles up that generally is considered the fringes of our atmosphere, and beginning of the rest of the universe.  Because the private spaceships lack the speed to go into earth orbit, roughly 17,000 miles per hour, the flights are essentially up and down experiences, lasting about two hours with as much as five minutes of weightlessness. Kind of an expensive roller-coaster ride on steroids.

But it is more of a ride than the ones offered by several companies that use Boeing 727s to produce a half-minute of weightlessness through a series of maneuvers about 25,000 feet up. Those flights, which generally sell for about $3,000, never even come close to the fringes of our atmosphere.

Here is a rundown of several companies that will start building their private spaceships this summer:

The biggest name is Virgin Galactic, a space tourism firm founded by British billionaire tycoon Richard Branson. Branson has partnered with Burt Rutan; whose SpaceShipOne in 2004 became the first private manned craft to reach space, to build a fleet of suborbital commercial spaceships called SpaceShipTwo.

SpaceShipTwo is about the size of a corporate Gulfstream jet that can hold six tourists and two crew members. Like SpaceShipOne, it will be powered by a hybrid rocket motor and use “feathering” technique to glide back to Earth.

The design of SpaceShipTwo is complete, and construction is slated for this summer with test flights scheduled for late next year. The project’s $100 million first phase is financed by Branson’s Virgin Group. Virgin Galactic plans to fly the first passengers for $200,000 each by late 2008 or early 2009, with the first leaving from California’s Mojave Desert and later flights from a proposed spaceport in New Mexico

Oklahoma-based Rocketplane Kistler, one of Virgin Galactic’s biggest competitors whose main investor is U.S. businessman George French, hopes to start test flights in January and fly commercially by the following summer. French owns several businesses including a space education company in Wisconsin.

The company is building a souped-up, 42-foot-long suborbital Lear Jet that can seat three passengers and a pilot. Unlike SpaceShipTwo, which would piggyback atop a mothership to a pre-determined height, the Rocketplane XP would take off and land like an airplane using turbojets and rockets. John Herrington, a former NASA astronaut will perform the suborbital test flights.

Space Adventures, a Virginia-based space travel agency best known for brokering three tourists to the international space station, is the latest entrant.

Last month, Space Adventures announced a partnership with member of the Ansari family – the major funders of the $10 million X Prize won by SpaceShipOne – to develop Russian-designed suborbital rocket ships that would launch from a proposed spaceport in the United Arab Emirates by 2008.

Canadian-based PlanetSpace, backed by U.S. businessman Chirinjeev Kathuris, is building a 54-foot-long, three-seat suborbital rocket that would launch from somewhere in the Great Lakes region and re-enter Earth by splashing into the water. It hopes to fly 2,000 passengers in the first five years, beginning in 2008.

Some market studies have shown that the public has an attitude of “if you build it, we will come.”

Futron, a Bethesda, Md-based aerospace consulting firm, estimated that revenues in the infant space tourism industry could exceed $1 billion a year by 2021, with the greatest demand occurring in suborbital flights in which passengers spend mere minutes in space.

Before tourists can lift off though, several federal hurdles must be cleared. Federal regulations that will govern human space travel and spell out safety and training requirements are expected to be finalized this summer.

Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta last month informed a meeting of space entrepreneurs the government would move swiftly to grant space travel licenses to companies that can prove they will operate safely.