(Photo: MySpace)

Space tourism isn't just for rich geeks dreaming of some hot man-on-alien action. The Sun reports that Coco Brown, an American porn star responsible for classic films such as Black Panty Chronicles 2 and Big Booty Bomb 2, is training to be the first-ever porn star in space.

Ms. Brown will pay around $100,000 to travel on a commercial space flight chartered by the Dutch company SpaceXC, which makes us wonder: damn, how much does porn pay these days? She'll undergo a series of grueling tests to make sure she's space-ready before the launch, which is aiming to take place around spring 2014.

Despite Ms. Brown's chosen career path, she will not be consummating her first-ever space flight with some zero-gravity sex, so reporters can stop asking about it, okay? "Trying to have sex in space is a little difficult," she told The Sun. "You just really don't have that much control. There would be nothing keeping you together."

Of course, Ms. Brown doesn't intend to disappoint her fans entirely. "Maybe I'll pop my boob out and take a photo of it with the Earth in the background," she said, by way of consolation.

(Photo: Chatter-fest)

Though commercial space initiatives have a whiff of sadness about them (RIP lots of NASA funding, RIP the space craze of the '50s), space geeks like your Betabeat reporters are excited by the prospect of making our way into outerspace however we can. And by the looks of it, every day people like you and me could soon be headed off into the ether--provided we have the massive amounts of cash to front the trip.

One of commercial space's most vocal proponents is Virgin Airlines CEO Richard Branson, who has made it his personal mission to help fund the pipe dreams of space-crazed citizens everywhere. CBS reports that Mr. Branson's spaceship, Virgin Galactic, will soon offer $200,000/ticket seats for a two hour trip to space, beginning as early as next year.

But that's not all. Mr. Branson is hellbent on establishing a human colony on Mars within the next 20-30 years.

"In my lifetime, I'm determined to being a part of starting a population on Mars," he told CBS. "I think it is absolutely realistic. It will happen."

Let's just hope those Virgin space shuttles to Mars are also lit up purple like a flying club in the sky.