Forget about the pyramids, in the future tourists travel into space.  There are really so many wonders to visit in the near future.  We will try to suggest some of these wonders for your travelers guide.

The  sparkling diamond of Uranus.

On the moon Miranda, one of the 27 known moons of Uranus, the most spectacular tourist designation of our solar system is waiting for us. 

This is where it is possible to float down along a vertical wall of ice about 15000 meters of height.

Thermal nuclear rocket.

Liquid hydrogen is heated inside a nuclear reactor.  Generates more than double force compared to a chemical rocket.

Plasma driven rocket.

The fuel is heated by radio waves into such extremely high temperatures that it becomes pure plasma.  The rocket nozzle is guided by a magnetic field.

Tourists has to travel more then three billion kilometers to get to the uranus-moon Miranda.  Out there the Sun is not more then then a shining star, and there is twilight everywhere.  But the Miranda is worth the long journey.  The main attraction, the wall of ice which is more then 15000 meters high, is so steep that new and advanced methods of descent has to be taken into use.  Inside a small vessel which we have brought with we fly up to the uppermost cliff sheer drop.  Because you are suited into a space suit with small rocket engines, it is only to take the dive out from the cliff.

At such minimal gravitational force you float quietly and peacefully downward.  Eve after a minute the speed has not exceeded 17km/h, and you have fallen only 142 meters.  The ice wall has most certainly existed for millions of years.  But how it came into being, no one knows - per heps made from a so enormous collision with something that the entire Miranda was transformed into a cloud of enormous blocks of ice which then gathered together once more into a new version of the old moon.

It is possible to make a stop on your way down, fly over to the ice wall and cut loose a peace of ice that per heps can explain how the ice wall was made.  If you brakes down only when you are at the bottom, the whole trip would take approximately a bulk of ten minutes.

The mountaintops of Venus are covered with snow.

Tourists visiting the greatest sights on Venus, the 11000 meter high Maxwell mountains, are in for a surprise.

Radio observations has told us that the highest mountaintops lies covered below something similar to snow.  But its better to let yous skies stay back home, because when the temperature up there is plus 380 degrees, there is no way talk about any snow of the type found on Earth.

Some astronomers suppose that the "snow" is iron sulphide with a golden gleam - Think of those yellow sediments that are found alongside some of the volcanoes on Earth.  Venus are generally to be found as travel spot for those that fancy challenges.

The surface is hidden behind a dense cloud layer made of concentrated sulphide acid.  Below the clouds both the pressure and temperature increases so much that only a spacecraft with the resistance of a heat-insulated submarine can manage to land there.

The high pressure makes it impossible to walk around on the surface dressed only in a space suit.  But it is possible to leave the spaceship inside a small terrain vehicle.

An exiting, but dangerous excursion might be the trip down to the lowlands where the temperature reaches 480 degrees celsius and the pressure increases into 90 atmospheres.  The best advice to a daring tourist would be to turn in due time and leave the exploration of the lowlands of Venus to be carried out by robots.

Travelling vehicles of the future.

Tourist travels within the solar system will require much faster rockets then the chemical based ones we use today.  Here are the suggestion of three possible varieties of future atomic driven spaceships.

Thermal nuclear rocket.

Liquid hydrogen is heated within a nuclear reactor.  Twice as powerful pushing force as the chemical vehicle.

Plasma rocket ship.

The fuel is heated by means of radio waves into so extremely high temperatures that it becomes into pure plasma.  The rocket nozzle is replaced by a guiding magnetic field.

Ion accelerated rocket.

The fuel is ionized and squeezed backwards by an electrical field at such high speed as 30 - 50 kilometer per second.

Extreme holiday for risk seekers.

Several hundred kilometer high fountains of fire and lakes of liquid sulphur.  A courageous tourist will find quite a sight when visiting Jupiter's volcanic moon .  But the visit is not without danger.

For daredevils a trip to the volcanic moon Io something to think about.  Risky business - but well worth the dangers.  Enormous tidal water forces from Jupiter and the neighbouring moons Europa and Ganymede keep the surface in an everlasting movement, and we experience continuously breakout from large sulphur volcanoes.  We see oceans of melted extrusive igneous rock and melted sulphur and steep mountains more then 1700 meter high. 

But everything has its price tag:  The particle radiation is totally lethal.  The journey demand that you are extremely well protected inside a special constructed and of course heavy space suit made from a material which not yet is developed.

But even then the stay has to be very brief - the dangerous radiation risk is much to high.

From the same reason the journey will go by the way of the neighbouring moon Callisto where there is awaiting a special developed and thick walled space craft which charter the tourists the final step over to Io.

To get to Io.

Time to travel to both ways:  1 -2 years by means of a swift atom-driven spacecraft.

Local conditions:  No atmosphere.  Very strong radiation.  Temperature about -150 degrees.  Gravitation approximately 18 per cent of Earth-gravitation.

Necessary equipment:  specially constructed radiation proof space suit.  Geological equipment.

How much:  approximately 2-3 billion Euro.

Most of all do not miss.....

Space travels within the region of Saturn that probably will go by a larger base build on Titan. 

While preparing travels to the rings of Saturn or Enceladus, waiting hours can be shortened by taking a sail trip on the lakes of Titan, made out of liquid methane.  Or even gaze at the enormous dunes that are not made from sand, but made of dark organically matter.  It is also possible to experience a real rainstorm made of methane pouring down from the orange clouds that cover the sky.

Something to be enjoyed from distance.

Our solar systems physical largest attraction we will never be able to visit, just admire from safe distance.  It would be suicide to maneuver a space vessel in among innumerable blocks of ice that the rings around Saturn is made of.  Instead we have to perform this within an other manner.

Next to the break on Titan and resting  at the shores of the methane lakes we set our course toward the ring system.  Our goal is to fly above the pretty flat ring system as close and still as safely as possible.  A lane that is situated 100 km above the rings will demand course corrections throughout the whole trip.  But with a small telescope it should be possible to observe the largest ice particles.

The attraction consist in observing how the narrow rings, tens of thousands of them, behave:  It comes into being new lumps of ice all the time when new small particles collide, disintegrates making showers of new ice particles.

An endless decomposition and construction which has been going on for more then three billion years.  Even after such long time the rings are still projecting as glimmering white because of the numerous smash-ups that happens all the time, making new outsides of the particles to be visible within the light from the sun.

Trip duration to and back:  2 - 3 years even when travelling on a fast atomic generated space craft.

Local conditions:  No atmosphere or firm surface available.  The dense parts of the rings are situated from 7000 - 80 000 km above Saturn.  The temperature is about minus 180 degrees.

Equipment:  Spacesuit.

Price tag:  Approximately 3-4 billion Euros.

The star version of Iceland.

An entire planet consisting of ice and who has gigantic geysers and subterranean caves, will be the reward for a patient space tourist.  Do you dare to leave for a tramp to Enceladus?

The small moon of Saturn - Enceladus - are seen during the entrance flight as an fantastic white icy planet.  On the trip the captain will alter the course in such manner that the passengers can see the enormous geysers which fizzle out from the famous "tiger stripes" - a system of ravines at Enceladus south pole.

This is where the tourist is landing and walks - or almost hover - in the weak gravitational force and over to one of the ravines where steam pour out almost like a geyser on Iceland.  Those most daring will per heps get the chance to climb down into one of the ravines to investigate from where this steam originates from.

Per heps there are tunnels or cracks that lead to an underground ocean.  We know that the water vapour is mixed with organic substances - something that give hope that we per heps can find life within this underground ocean.  The possibility to investigate these underground caves that most certainly exist on Enceladus, will probably cause most of the tourist the feeling that its worth the trip.  The ice caves will most likely be filled with a mixture of vapour an water, something that causes very bad sighting.

But it will be very exiting to find out what the water sample that are brought back to Earth from the holiday trip contains.

Travel time to and back:  2-3 years, even when using a swift nuclear driven spacecraft.

Local conditions:  No atmosphere.  Surface covered with ice.  The temperature is -200 degrees, but locally close to the "tiger stripes" it rises to -115 degrees.  Gravity one per cent of Earth.

Equipment:  Spacesuit.

Cost:  approximately 3-4 billion Euro.

Mars surpass the Grand Canyon.

4000 km long, 150 km wide and about 7000 meter deep - the ravine Valles Marineris on Mars make our own Grand Canyon look like a streak in the sand.  Marineris is the largest ravine within the solar system.

The giant cleft was made billions of years ago from geological forces that made the surface crack up.  But it came to be at a time period when Mars had a warmer climate, per heps with lakes and rivers and blue sky with clouds upon it., just like it is on Earth today.

Prior to the descent on board the mars vehicle you should go out and enjoy the view.  Especially at break of day you might be lucky and see the mist at the bottom of the ravine, and using extremely good binoculars you can far away in the horizon in the south dimly perceive the opposite side of the ravine almost 150 km away.

Chauffeur experience will be needed to manage the drive at the bottom of the ravine where there are full of dunes and ranges of hills.

The hills will also be worth a excursion, because there we see layers of rocks which might contain traces from a earlier vigorous Mars.

Leave for a time-travel to the moon.

If you are looking for a flying visit, the Copernicus-crater on the front side of the Moon is one of the more earth-close attractions.

The crater came into being for about 800 million years ago, and standing on the crater formation top, it will be experienced as a visit to the pyramids to be taught something from the past of human history.  The crater is a proof of the violent history of our solar system, and within Copernicus we are still able to study the effect from the crust breaking at the time when a rock of the size of Mount Everest hit the Moon. 

Because of the rugged terrain it is necessary to land a safe distance from the crater itself just to go by a moon vehicle the last few meters.  From the rim of the crater there is a wide view, and we are able to see the central mountain in the middle.

The bottom of the crater lies five thousand meters below the brim, and because the wall is so steep, the trip down can take about three days.

Here is the problem: everywhere we look on Earth, there is life. Microbes multiply in the highest clouds; bacteria cling to Saharan desert dust as it blows across the Atlantic; millions of viral particles dance in a droplet of seawater. Microbes thrive in ice, super-heated water, acid, alkaline solutions, salt lakes and even nuclear reactor waste pools. Deep in the ocean basalt, there is a vast subculture of tiny creatures that exploit a hydrogen economy: they turn water and carbon dioxide into methane and live off the difference, hydrogen.

Here is the other half of the same problem: everywhere beyond Earth, there is silence. If life spontaneously evolved and intelligence imperfectly flowered on one planet, what about all those other rocky planets? Terrestrial civilisation has been beaming microwave messages into space for 50 years, in the form of Coronation Street and I Love Lucy, Dr Whoand Battle-star Galactica. And since April 1960 the astronomer Frank Drake and his colleagues in Seti, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, have been listening for signals from those other, so-far invisible planets that surely must be orbiting those stars that are strewn across 100,000 light years of space.These invisible organisms are life's substrate, the origin of everything. From such small beginnings grew crane flies and critics; aspidistras and astrophysicists. On the evidence from planet Earth, life is an urgent, unstoppable force: it will go anywhere there is liquid water and a source of energy.

And what have they heard? The random fizz and splutter of the accidental noise from pulsars and quasars, from hot gas and cold dust and exploding stars: otherwise, nothing. The sound of extraterrestrial life is the sound of silence.

Paul Davies is a cosmologist who turned to the problem of life in the cosmos at least 15 years ago: this is, on my count, his fourth book on the theme. He is chairman of the Seti post-detection task group, a little committee of rationalists prepared to confront one of the most intoxicating and terrifying challenges of all time: if we do hear from ET, Davies and colleagues will be the first to know. This improbable burden could explain why The Eerie Silence may not be his most thrilling book, but is certainly one of his most thoughtful: there is hardly an aspect of the great Seti puzzle that he does not address, in clear, almost laconic vernacular.

Is there silence because extraterrestrials simply do not exist? Are the conditions for the emergence of life so far-fetched, so ludicrously improbable that it happened only once, on one planet orbiting one star in just one galaxy during the whole 13.7-billion-year lifetime of the universe? Or is the universe humming with life, but humming so quietly that we cannot hear it?

If the first proposition is true, then humanity has a lonely responsibility, first not to destroy itself in an ecological or thermonuclear catastrophe, then to outlive its parent sun, and colonise the galaxy. If the second proposition is true, where is everybody?

The first and possibly terminal problem is distance. If the nearest technologically advanced, curious neighbour is 1,000 light years away, we may never meet, because the laws of physics make communication difficult and head-on encounter vanishingly improbable. If, on the other hand, a superior, knowing intelligence is quietly monitoring planet Earth with instruments 1,000 light years away, then it cannot know that we have discovered physics, invented the telescope and tuned into radioastronomy. That information will take another 1,000 years to arrive, while on the planet that ET observes, Byzantine emperors still hold Constantinople.

And who says radio is for ever? It was invented a century ago, but increasingly, data is transmitted by cable: one day, perhaps, fibre optics will carry everything, and the planet will again fall into radio silence. Who says aliens will use terrestrial 20th-century technology? Perhaps life is frequent, but intelligence is highly improbable. Or perhaps all competitive, technological civilisations discover thermonuclear weapons, and destroy themselves. Maybe the rest of the galaxy is keeping a vow of silence, leaving us either to obliterate ourselves or grow up enough to join the federation.

Why should we think of ET as even remotely humanoid? Could some imperial galactic civilisation have already colonised the galaxy, stripped it of resources, left some mystifying structures, and moved on? Has ET been this way by proxy, using probes and detectors that we cannot recognise, because our imaginations are limited by our technology and our experience? Voyager and Pioneer probes are heading out of the solar system carrying 1970s hardware – computers with tapes, long playing records – now almost laughably out-of-date. What kind of technology would be in the hands of a civilisation with a million-year head start on ours? As Davies keeps pointing out, we do not know, and we cannot even begin to guess, the technology, the motives or the philosophy of an extraterrestrial intelligence. We have to be ready for anything, or perhaps nothing.

The problem for both Earthly and unearthly civilisations, as James Kasting's book How to Find a Habitable Planet (Princeton, £20.95) reminds us, is time. Hydrogen-fusing stars with a lifetime of five to 10 billion years must accrete, ignite, burn and then explode just to forge and distribute carbon and oxygen and the other 89 elements needed to fashion an appropriately sized rocky planet with a watery surface, ideally in a "Goldilocks zone" a safe distance from a second-generation parent star, ideally with a large moon to stabilise its axial spin, with a geomagnetic field to deflect deadly solar missiles and enough interior tectonic activity to keep renewing itself.

Here on Earth, life began within the first billion years, but complex life required another 3.8 billion years to make a primate. In 5 billion years, the sun will flare up and incinerate planet Earth, but life's tenure will have ended long before that, perhaps 500 million years from now, as carbon dioxide levels fall to near zero, plants perish and the seas begin to boil away. To survive, tomorrow's Earthlings must find somewhere else to live. ET, presumably, faces the same pressure.

Kasting's book – serious planetary science with graphs, equations and chemical symbols – is a readable guide to the many things we have just begun to understand about a solar system. Davies's book is an authoritatively written, immensely clear, lay person's guide to the many things we don't know about the rest of the universe. The two complement each other, and end on a similarly speculative note.

"My own guess is that, just as we learned that the Sun is an ordinary star, we will find that Earth is an ordinary planet and that life itself is a commonplace phenomenon that exists on most, or all, such planets," says Kasting. "But that is just a guess." The scientist in him, says Davies, suspects that humans may be the only intelligent beings in the universe. The philosopher in him hates the idea. "Frankly, it makes me uneasy. I wonder what all that stuff out there is for, when only lowly Homo sapience gets to see it."