Barring any kind of disaster, invasion of aliens or meteorite strike, American "space tourist" Gregory Ol-sen should today be settling down to enjoy his very special holiday.

With an undisclosed price tag, but believed to be in the region of £11 million, the ten-day "break" in orbit is probably a bit more expensive than a holiday at Butlins. And he probably won't see as many weird sights, either.

But the US businessman can evidently afford it.

His company produces highly-sensitive photographic film and does work for the American space agency Nasa.

Still, eleven million quid. Imagine the monthly repayments if you booked that on your Barclaycard. And what about insurance? I bet Thomas Cook's would go a bit white if you asked to be insured for a flight to space. They'd probably want to put you on that higher rate insurance they do for people who go snow-boarding and stuff.

Holidays in space have been an idle dream of many of us earth-bound creatures for decades.

There were those optimistic types back in the 1950s and 1960s who were predicting that by the turn of the century it would be quite normal for us to be packing up and going to the moon for a fortnight every year ("Lovely place, but not much atmosphere").

That obviously hasn't happened - at least not for those of us who don't have £11 million in loose change. And Gregory Olsen won't exactly be having a "holiday" - he'll be crammed into the International Space Station with proper spacemen who have all kinds of official astronauty things to do like fly around in zero gravity and watch globules of water floating around.

If I was having a holiday in space, I'm afraid I'd want a bit more comfort than that. My ideal space-break would probably have to take place on a lush planet with at least three moons in a purple sky. There would be a shiny silver hotel on stilts staffed by blue-skinned women with three eyes who would be able to read your mind before every mealtime and conjure up proper food such as egg and chips and moussaka.

The whole "space tourist" thing also raises questions about just whether it's right and proper to spend so much money on what is basically a huge ego-trip.

There are already - and have been for a long time - arguments raging about whether billions should be spent on space exploration when there are people starving right here on earth.

Taken in those terms, it's perhaps difficult to justify, but I suppose space research has a lot of byproducts that can help us stuck here on earth, such as, erm, non-stick pan coverings.

Maybe Gregory Olsen gives a lot of money to charity anyway. Maybe he doesn't, and considers that he's earned his money himself so why should anyone else give a flying moonrock what he does with it? But if you had £11 million going begging, would you use it to fly to orbit and back?

Perhaps we'd all like to think that we'd make life better for other people if we had so much money to dis-pose of, and I'd probably feel the same.

But maybe in that situation, being handed the chance for the great human dream of being able to stand on the brink of the great unknown that is the universe all around us, who knows which way I'd jump.

We could perhaps all spend less on ourselves and give more to the needy than we do, so any arguments about whether Gregory Olsen has a "right" to spend £11 million of his own money on a holiday into space are pretty redundant.