Virgin boss in space tourism bid

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
Date: September 27, 2004 7:41:09 AM EDT
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Virgin boss in space tourism bid
Reply-To: dewayne () warpspeed com

 Virgin boss in space tourism bid

 Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson has signed a £14m agreement which will 
see his company take passengers into space.

 The British entrepreneur is having five "spaceliners" built in the US 
by the team behind the SpaceShipOne vehicle.

 The California-based rocket plane became the first privately developed 
carrier to go above 100km in June.

 Sir Richard says it will cost around £100,000 to go on a "Virgin 
Galactic" spaceship, and the first flights should begin in about three 
years' time

 Sir Richard revealed his new venture at a briefing held on Monday at 
the Royal Aeronautical Society in London.

 "We've done quite a lot of research; we think there are about 3,000 
people out there who would want to do this," Sir Richard told the BBC.

 "If it is a success, we want to move into orbital flights and then, 
possibly, even get a hotel up there."

 The deal is with Mojave Aerospace Ventures, the company set up by 
aviation pioneer Burt Rutan and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen to 
exploit the technology developed for SpaceShipOne.

 SpaceShipOne is one of more than 20 other craft vying for the $10m 
(£5.7m) Ansari X-Prize, which rewards the first team to send a 
non-government, three-person craft over 100km into space, and repeat 
the feat in the same craft inside two weeks.

 SpaceShipOne has already demonstrated its ability to reach space (an 
altitude of 100km/62 miles) and will begin its bid to claim the X-prize 
on Wednesday.

 The Virgin boss was flanked at Monday's announcement by Rutan, who has 
already collaborated with Sir Richard on Virgin GlobalFlyer, a jet 
plane designed to fly non-stop around the world without refuelling.

 "Virgin has been in talks with Paul Allen and Burt throughout this 
year and in the early hours of Saturday morning signed a historical 
deal to license SpaceShipOne's technology to build the world's first 
private spaceship to go into commercial operating service," Sir Richard 
said.

 Commentators said it was a logical next step for someone to come in 
and move the SpaceShipOne technology into the commercial flight 
business.

 David Ashford, director of UK-based Bristol Spaceplanes Limited, 
another X-Prize contender, said space was finally being opened up for 
ordinary people.

 "The price will come down - there's no doubt about that," he told BBC 
News Online.

 "The X-Prize has succeeded in doing what it set out to do. The 
original idea was to break the mould of thinking - to break Nasa's 
monopoly on space policy. Space tourism should have happened many years 
ago."

 Story from BBC NEWS:
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/sci/tech/3693020.stm

 Published: 2004/09/27 08:38:31 GMT

Archives at: <http://Wireless.Com/Dewayne-Net>
Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com>

-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as interesting-people () lists elistx com
To manage your subscription, go to
 http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/