The closest that Alan Watts came to experiencing outer space was on a theme park ride — now the British businessman has traded his multitude of frequent-flier miles for a real journey 75 miles (120 kilometers) above Earth, he said Thursday.

Watts has racked up 2 million flyer miles and plans to travel on the world’s first commercial tourism flights to space…

He will be among the first 1,000 people to travel on a space tourism program in 2009 with Virgin Galactic, an offshoot of British entrepreneur Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic. Flights cost $200,000.

Watts, of London, is the managing director of an electrical engineering firm and has taken more than 30 Virgin Atlantic flights in the last six years.

“The nearest I’ve come to space before was going on the Space Mountain ride in Florida,” Watts said in a statement, referring to an attraction at Florida’s Disney World.

“When we first contacted Alan to let him know he had qualified for this unique offer, I think he thought it was a prank call,” Branson said in a statement.

This story started this morning with SmartAlix’s post about the debut of the Virgin Galactic cabin module.

Fascinating stuff. As a schoolboy reading sci-fi, I only dreamed about events like this coming to pass. Another century or so and this is going to be commonplace.