Space, as a certain television programme likes to remind us, is the final frontier. It's a place of mystery that promises both great discoveries and - if Captain Kirk's weekly wrestling-bouts with rubber-suited aliens are anything to go by - great dangers.

But who decides how humans are to cope with this cosmic question mark?

Until recently that was an irrelevant question. Only the world's biggest governments had the resources to get into orbit, and apart from a few grumbles about the amount of money space exploration was diverting from social welfare programmes, no one seemed too bothered about that. But with the end of the Cold War, and the corresponding end of public willingness to fund extravagant space research, talk has suddenly started of space travel as a commercial activity.

These days, market forces reign supreme, and the notion of space tourism is being actively promoted by various groups, especially in America. An award of $5 to $10 million, known as the X Prize (www.xprize.org/) is on offer to the first group that can fly a reusable suborbital spacecraft carrying at least three people twice in 14 days. A consortium of 16 aerospace companies, known as the Space Transport Association, is actively lobbying Hollywood for propaganda support in promoting the "new space age". The cosmos, it seems, is up for grabs.

Meanwhile, the politics of space travel are creeping up the agenda. Should space be the sole preserve of governments? Should it be open to commercial exploitation? As early as 1967 the United Nations had started to deal with the thornier political problems of space exploration, drawing up a "Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies", which at the last count had 91 signatories. The treaty sets out various extraterrestrial fundamentals, such as a ban on nuclear weapons, a duty to tell other governments if your astronauts encounter anything scary, and the paramount principle that, for the moment at least, space should "belong" to all states equally.

All this seems well and good, but for one group of skyward-looking radicals, the choice between government-controlled space exploration, and commercial space-exploitation, is no choice at all. The Association of Autonomous Astronauts (aaa.t0.or.at/) has a nice logo, no money and a big dream - space travel by the people, for the people, right now. The AAA's five year plan (now in its second year) foresees the establishment of a worldwide network of community-based groups, devoted to building their own spaceships.

They are demanding that NASA, the European Space Agency and all other government-funded exploration bodies immediately surrender all their assets to the AAA, which has no overall leadership, just a network of cells, each of which is free to follow its own route to infinity and beyond.

The AAA wants nothing less than the liberation of the human spirit to imagine the true possibilities of life among the stars. Er, right. So you can see why I decided to travel to their first Intergalactic Conference in Vienna, in order to ask them the burning question: "Do you think you could run that by us one more time?"

The conference brought together would-be astronauts from around the world, together with fellow travellers and the merely curious, all of whom gathered in a hangar-like hall in Vienna's Museumsquartier to listen to accounts of the AAA's activities, and related presentations. An Italian astrophysicist described her discovery of " the music of the galaxies"; a bemused astronomer from the Austrian national space agency wished everyone well and then made for the door.

The audience seemed to consist mainly of Vienna's young and groovy, with representatives from Austrian TV and various print publications looking for men in shiny spacesuits.

Failing to find any Neil Armstrong lookalikes, they gathered round a gang of small children, part of an AAA-run project to design and build their own spaceship (more Blue Peter than Cape Canaveral). Meanwhile, AAA representatives, whose earthly activities range from publishing and community work, to those bastions of anti-social behaviour, Webdesign, DJ-ing and the dole, spread the word of their five-year mission, and recruited young Viennese.

At the post-conference picnic in a Vienna park (for technical reasons the Moon was not available), some key AAA flight personnel explained the nature of their mission. Patric O'Brien, a Sun Ra loving 40-something "psychogeographer" and member of East London AAA, was matter-of-fact.

"Really there's no option about going to space. It's there, it's around us. If we start moving in any direction, we've got to go to space, it's just that people are trying to keep us exactly where we are."

Jason Skeet, who, in his twenties, is the main ideologue of Inner City AAA, added: "It's not a joke, it's very serious. What we're trying to do is destroy what we've described as the military-governmental-corporate monopoly of space exploration."

So what's actually wrong with the way the governments and corporations are doing things? Apart from the occasional launch problem, NASA seems reasonably technically competent. For AAA press officer John Eden, the problem lies, not with technology, but in the authorities' limited vision.

"There's no point in going into outer space if you're just going to have the same kind of life as you do on planet Earth. We don't want to end up on the Moon and then just have a row of shops with M&S and WH Smiths up there. Outer space represents a new opportunity, possibly a new stage in human evolution, and you can't take your gravity-bound preconceptions into outer space if you're going to use it to its full benefit."

But what should we be doing among the stars, if taking rock samples is not enough? "Whatever you want. The AAA is about travelling in different directions. We're not going to dictate to anyone."

In order to encourage people to imagine space in a joyful, playful way, the AAA is offering its own million pound prize - the XXX Prize. It will be given to the first privately funded team to launch a craft into suborbital space and engage in sexual intercourse. Any number or combination of people may be involved (this is all about imagining limitless possibilities, after all), the only condition being that visual proof of successful docking must be provided. The money has yet to be raised, though one idea is to approach David Bowie - the rationale being that the man who recorded Space Oddity will surely see the point of the enterprise.

Asked why they are part of the AAA, members give answers ranging from "because I think it is the most important (r)evolutionary movement active in the world today" to "it looked like fun".

But although the AAA spends rather more time playing three-sided football and imagining space-based raves than designing propulsion engines or studying star maps, it is also making a serious point about technology. As Konrad Becker, one of the Austrian organisers of the Intergalactic Conference, put it: "The issue of the emancipatory use of technology is very dear to us. All technologies - like data networks - can be used for liberation or enslavement. By asking people to imagine better uses for space technology, we're also asking them to think about what's happening back here on Earth."

This article is reprinted from the Daily Telegraph's July 27th 1997 'Connected' supplement.