Virgin’s space venture offers 5 minutes in space for $200,000
SINGAPORE: Virgin Galactic, the billionaire Richard Bransons space travel venture, plans to order five more spaceships and aims to turn a profit in five years from its commercial start in 2010, Alex Tai, the firms group director, said Thursday.
Prospective space travellers have so far placed deposits totaling more than $31 million for tickets that cost $200,000 each and would give them five minutes in space, Tai said.
“In the short term, we have firm orders for five spaceships and options for seven,” Tai said during an interview at the Singapore Airshow. “We believe there is a very strong market.”
About 80,000 people from 120 countries have shown interest in these commercial space flights that are likely to start in 2010. Seriously interested travellers are asked to deposit at least $20,000, according to Virgin Galactics Web site (http://www.virgingalactic.com).
“It really is a life-time experience,” Tai said.
Virgin, which wants to be the first to take paying passengers into space on a regular basis, will invest $250 million in the space program, Tai said.
He declined to give the cost of each craft or the maker, though some parts will come from Pratt Whitney, the jet engine unit of United Technologies.
Asked when the company would become profitable, Tai said: “I imagine it will be inside the first five years.”
Virgins SpaceShipTwo, introduced last month and to be tested later this year, will be able to carry 8 people into suborbital space. Virgin expects to start with one flight a week before ramping it up to 14 flights a week.
For $200,000, Virgin will prepare space travellers over three days for their 2-hour flight beyond Earths atmosphere that will culminate in five minutes in space. The three-day program will include simulating a zero- gravity environment, showing travellers what it means to accelerate and decelerate quickly, as well as what the Earth looks like from space, Tai said. The spaceship will initially be launched from Mojave, California, but will eventually take off from a space port in New Mexico.
Virgin Galactic is one of several contenders in the new commercial space race. Others include Astrium, the space arm of the European Aeronautic Defense Space; Blue Origin, started by the Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos; Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), created by the PayPal founder Elon Musk; and Bigelow Aerospace, a venture aimed at creating space hotels, started by the hotel owner Robert Bigelow.
