I've often thought about trying something like this:

Out of this world: British teddy bears strapped to helium weather balloon
reach the edge of space

It's not often that Britain can claim a win in the space race. But these teddy bears drifting nearly 20 miles above Earth have become the first soft toys to take part in extra-vehicular activity (to use correct NASA jargon) at such an altitude.

The soft toys MAT and KMS were named after the first initials of the pupils who helped make their space suits.

Along with their two intrepid colleagues, they were strapped to a beam attached to a foam-padded box containing instrumentation and cameras on Monday.

After rising to an altitude of around 100,000ft, a webcam caught their 'space-walk' for posterity before the helium balloon burst.

They then fell to Earth before a parachute opened automatically to provide a soft landing.

I'm impressed that school kids could pull this off -- albeit with some help. This is just more evidence of powerful capabilities finding their way into the hands of regular people.

We don't usually think of weather balloons as spacecraft, but what these kids managed to create for the stuffed animals is a fairly good prototype for a manned sub-orbital mission. I would certainly like to take a balloon up and have a look at the view those bears were posed in front of. I bet others would, too. And I have a feeling that lighter-than-air missions to these heights can be done for a fraction of the cost of rocket-propelled missions. Sure, you won't go fast, but if we're talking sub-orbital flights with the rockets anyway, what difference does it make?

If space tourism really does take off as a business model, look for ballooning to provide the low end of the market. I have a feeling it will be quite popular.