Buzz Aldrin

Bringing a wealth of experience and his unique vision to the panel is pioneering astronaut Buzz Aldrin, who together with Neil Armstrong was one of the first men to set foot on the moon in the historic Apollo XI mission. As well as lecturing on his experiences and ideas for exploring the universe, Aldrin now heads Starcraft Enterprises, a group that explores his ideas for space travel in the future.

"I support the vision, which is the moon, Mars and beyond," he told CNN.

"I really do want to see orbital tourism take place, and not just have it as a ride for passengers on Soyuz rockets going up to the space station."

He sees private enterprise as key to further space exploration by tourists and is full of ideas for how it might be funded. One idea is a national space lottery he believes would help fund a new wave of space travel and capture the public's imagination.

Anousheh Ansari

Anousheh Ansari captured the headlines recently as the world's first female space tourist.

"My favourite moment," she said while aboard the International Space Station, "was when I was able to see the earth for the first time. To see it so beautiful and peaceful in the dark background was a moment I will never forget.

"While on the International Space Station we would do an orbit every 90 minutes, so we had 32 sunrises and sunsets during a 24 hour period. That transition when daylight passes over is also beautiful."

Her incredible experience on the International Space Station lasted 10 days, but she spent the six months before training at Star City in Russia. An active proponent of world-changing technologies, her family also provides the title sponsorship for the Ansari X-Prize.

Lino Guzzella

Designing cars that are highly fuel-efficient and that reduce harmful emissions is the goal of Lino Guzzella, a professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. His work has looked at developing more efficient engines and battery technology. His team designed the PAC-Car II, a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle that won the Energy Globe Award in November 2005. The team calculated that the car used the equivalent of one litre of gasoline to travel 5,385 km.

"The next step after developing super-efficient gasoline and diesel engines is the creation of zero-emission cars. There's an enormous potential for growth in the developing world for car ownership, so it's a necessary step. The automotive industry is incredibly good at making things affordable, but the real challenge lies in getting the costs of hydrogen down and developing its production from renewable sources. Advances in battery technology however could provide a real option for cars in the next ten years."

Ian Pearson

If it's in the future, Ian Pearson has probably considered it.

"In thirty years time we'll be starting to see the start of the hydrogen economy, we'll have completely different kinds of cars than we have today, and most of the highways will be completely automated. "

Pearson graduated in 1981 in Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics from Queens University, Belfast going on to work in a host of fields including network design, evolution, cybernetics and mobile systems. He is now the futurist-in-residence for BT, the UK telecommunications company, and is in a key position to see what lies ahead.

"There's an awful lot of research which needs to be done in terms of long distance space travel, but in thirty years time, we'll probably have the first bases on Mars and a larger colony on the Moon with a few dozen explorers."