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Only someone with an unconventional disposition, such as party-going Virgin owner and rebel billionaire Richard Branson, could dream up a leisure scheme like cosmic travel and make it a reality. Everyone wants to check out space—the final frontier, the black abyss, the heavens above. With the launch of Virgin Galactic, Branson is bringing that childhood dream to a spaceport near you.
For the past 50 years, space travel has been pretty stagnant, limited to superhumans (we call them “astronauts.”) But as soon as mid-2009, pretty much anyone with piles of extra money strewn about the house will be able to hop aboard one of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwos, launch into suborbital space, experience weightlessness, see the curvature of the Earth and come home—all before dinner.
That is, if $200,000 sounds reasonable for a round-trip ticket. Since the reservation books opened in 2005, more than 200 people have secured their spot in space-tourism history. At a New York press conference earlier this year, Branson expressed the goal to one day use the spaceships as “commercial passenger vehicles, whisking people from one point on the Earth to another in record-breaking times.”
Our Tomorrowland visions of the future may be about to come true. Now all we need are some foil helmets. And $200,000.
Think we're lying? Check the Virgin Galactic website for the deets.
