Virgin Galactic gets the green light: US aviation authorities approve Branson's space flights for l

Well this is cool. I just wish I had the money to take the trip.

Richard Branson's dream to charter commercial space flights has taken a step closer to reality.
His company, Virgin Galactic, yesterday signed a deal with U.S. aviation authorities to let it blast paying customers into space.
Commercial flights are to begin by the end of this year and more than 600 people have already signed up at $250,000 (£150,000) each to take a trip on SpaceShipTwo.

www.dailymail.co.uk...

a reply to: nighthawk1954

Very cool indeed!
Do they have economy class?
If not, I'll just have to wait some years, until the ticket price goes down.

a reply to: nighthawk1954

Wooo HOOO! Go, Beardy Branson!

It is good to see that the permissions which were required for this to go ahead, have been given, and the deals that needed making have been struck. The quicker we start to open space up to tourism, the quicker the future happens.

If I won the lotto I would book a flight and have a certain cake on the way to be the first real space cadet lol.
Pity Iam too old now to see the price fall so we can all go .

I gotta say Branson is a decent bloke..he is giving all profits from his travel company's to help combat the effects of climate change for 10 years or something...about 3 billion.

a reply to: nighthawk1954

Hmmm. so where going to shoot rich people into space?

Whats better than forty lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?

a reply to: intrptr

And they are all chained together.

a reply to: nighthawk1954

Well at this rate it may come down to reasonable rates in my life time. In 2005 it was about 20 million to get to the ISS. Now it is 250K to get orbital. Give it another 20 years and it might be down to what we pay now for a trans-oceanic flight.
With the private sector in it for the profit, the tech involved to get orbital will move ahead more quickly.

a reply to: intrptr

Fifty bankers fired into the sun, on a rocket that was paid for out of their OBSCENE amount of personal wealth? An oil baron being catapulted into the whirring blades of a windmill in a high wind? The Federal Reserve in the US, and the Treasury in the UK being blown up with a half tonne each of plastic explosive, with coins packed around them to produce vast quantities of fragmentation?

The list of possibilities is massive !

I see space hotels within our lifetimes and possible First Contact???

a reply to: Sammamishman

I'm too old and broken to ride but I sure would like to go watch the first launch. It won't be as spectacular as a shuttle launch but cool none the less.

Major setbacks! www.msn.com... Maybe authorities had to okay the development of these technologies because it would look too suspicious if they didn't, but they can't let them succeed because then they'll get out there and see what the government is covering up, so they sabotage? If so, these pilots' blood is on their hands along with that of many others. If not, well, both the U. S. and Russian governments had many setbacks in their quest to achieve space flight.