X Prize hopes to jump-start space tourism. (X Prize Foundation)

Tourists wait in line for an hour or more most days so Disney can drop them 13 floors down an elevator shaft in its Tower of Terror ride.

Universal Studios is spending $50 million to put a Terminator 2-themed attraction here, and the reported goal is to scare up to 700 people at a time out of their skulls.

But if higher, faster, scarier and more expensive are the keys to drawing the big tourist numbers, a guy who works outside the Beltway in Washington is onto the ultimate tourist magnet: putting people in space as part of a commercial tourism program.

As chairman of the X Prize Foundation, Peter H. Diamandis is on a quest to raise between $5 million and $10 million (preferably the latter) that would be awarded to the winner of an unusual competition. According to a draft set of rules, the privately financed winner will launch two humans …