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A tiny step for man; a giant leap for the art scene.

So says the Tate, the venerable British art institution that has apparently determined the location of its next gallery. Here's a hint: It's not on this planet.

First there was Tate Britain. Then there was Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool and Tate St. Ives. Next, coming to a galaxy near you: Tate in Space -- an extraterrestrial art-exhibition venue for space tourists in search of intergalactic cultural enrichment.

"In order to fulfill their mission to extend access to British and International contemporary art, the Tate Trustees have been considering for some time how they could find new dimensions to Tate's work," Tate program director Sandy Naime writes on the project's Web site, http://www.tate.org.uk/space .

"They have therefore determined that the next Tate site should be in space."

The site continues: "At this stage, a number of practical aspects of the project are being tested and an early pre-opening program is being taken forward. This will clearly continue the Tate tradition of innovation and exploration, and provide a radical new location for the display of the Collection and for educational projects."

The Web site itself is so slick-looking and full of dry art jargon that the project seems very nearly credible.

The Tate has even gone so far as to commission plans for the gallery from three hot young London architectural firms -- ETALAB (Extraterrestrial architecture laboratory), Softroom and Sarah Wigglesworth Architects.

Tate in Space could be the best spoof since Orson Welles's radio version of War of the Worlds -- or the most forward-thinking project since Leonardo da Vinci's flying machine. It was the brainchild of Susan Collins, an artist and the director of the on-line phase of the project. Together with the Tate program directors and curators, Collins designed the Web site, commissioned designs and organized discussion groups in an effort to raise the project's profile.

Collins doesn't trouble herself with the obvious monetary and logistical obstacles to getting an art gallery into orbit (not to mention getting earthlings out to visit). From her perspective, the project is in the "development phase."

"My primary interest in initiating the Tate in Space Web site was to do a deadpan examination of cultural imperialism. It's time to ask a few questions, and the Tate was the perfect scenario for that. In a sense, the site is throwing down the gauntlet. If you're really serious about expansion -- how interested are you?"

While Collins admits no one at the Tate is actively fundraising, she maintains that, "in the future, the concept of a gallery in space is perfectly possible." For now, however, the gallery "exists as a construct, as a question."

In other words, it doesn't actually exist . . . yet.

While Collins maintains that the site "isn't meant to mislead anybody," there is a central untruth at the heart of the Tate in Space project: the satellite.

According to the Web site, Tate in Space launched a satellite on June 6, 2002, that orbits the Earth every 92.56 seconds at a velocity of 7.67 kilometres per second. The satellite, according to the site, is "essential for the development of instruments and new technologies in the Tate in Space gallery."

The site offers a detailed description of the mega-gadget, Web-cam photos from the satellite and detailed instructions on how to view it from anywhere from Rio de Janeiro to Berlin. Viewers are asked to send in photos of their satellite sightings. They even reveal the supposed cost of launching the satellite: £600,000, almost $1.5-million (Canadian). An amount not far off what many people pay for a house in some parts of London.

When pressed, Collins admits that the satellite is more of a "speculative venture" than a real satellite. In the same breath, she insists the Tate in Space is not a parody.

"I asked people to send in their pictures of the satellite because I believe it's possible for people to believe something into existence. It's like that film Capricorn One,where something goes wrong with the mission so they just stage one instead," she explained.

Since the conceptual stage, she said, the project took on a life of its own. As a speculative venture, the Tate has backed the project fully -- hiring architects to submit designs and adding "space" to its main on-line menu of galleries.

"Suddenly space got a bit trendy, it got plausible. It's not so extraordinary to think about a gallery in space. The people at the Tate are quite serious about it. Now all we need is a happy Bill Gates-type to say, 'Here you go!' "

Seems hard to swallow. And yet, behind every architectural wonder and technological leap lies a lofty dream that people once snickered at.

What's more, art in space is nothing new. It has been taken aboard the shuttles since 1969, when The Moon Museum,a small ceramic tile with sketches by Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg, made the passage into space on Apollo 12. The first artwork to investigate the possibilities of art in weightlessness was Earth is The Cosmic Dancer,by Arthur Woods, an American artist living in Switzerland. Launched on the Mir Space Station on May 22, 1993, the sharp-angled sculpture floated around in the cosmonauts' living space.

"People are sending art into space all the time," Collins says. "Currently you've got a [British] Beagle lander [piggybacking on a European Space Agency mission in June of next year] being sent off to Mars with a [work by artist] Damien Hirst on it. When it lands, they're going to play a pop song. And there are artists at NASA learning how to paint in microgravity."

Interactive designs for the gravity-defying art venue can be seen on the project Web site. The ETALAB design by partners Danielle Tinero and Opher Elia-Shaul, for example, resembles a morphing wad of putty. It would be constructed, to use architectural lingo, using "smart materials." The building itself would be able to be hardwired into a central computer "brain," which would allow it to emulate a human nervous system and adapt to the changing gravitational environment.

If constructed, ETALAB's Tate in Space would act as the Earth's first intergalactic cultural embassy -- docking at the international space station and then detaching and floating around the universe for an extended period.

The interior of the gallery would be controlled by microgravity, so both visitors and art would float freely around the space. The cafeteria would be an unharnessed bubble. The plumbing, Tinero admits, poses a problem. While looking at art in microgravity might be a fantastic experience, visiting the loo seems less promising. But despite all the obvious obstacles, Tinero is determined to bring the project to fruition.

"As an architect, it's always been my dream, building something in space," she said in an interview. "I'm just waiting for the technology to accommodate it. That includes things like low-cost travel and how to get water up there. Once they can get sustainable and cheaper means of getting people into space and support a larger community of people, I don't see why it shouldn't happen. It's like people talking about putting a man on the moon -- it must have sounded pretty fanciful before it happened."

Whether Tinero's design will ever be built -- or whether any of the earthlings alive today will live to see a gallery in space -- obviously remains to be seen. In the meantime, the Tate in Space planners are doing what artists do so well. They are taking themselves very, very seriously.