Branson and NM officials dedicate space terminal

UPHAM, N.M. (AP) — With his usual flair, British billionaire Richard Branson rappelled from a balcony, shook up a big bottle of champagne and took a swig while christening the world's first built-from-scratch commercial spaceport on Monday.

Branson's Virgin Galactic will stage its commercial space tourism venture from Spaceport America in a remote patch of desert in southern New Mexico.

Branson was joined by Gov. Susana Martinez, astronaut Buzz Aldrin and scores of would-be space travelers at the terminal-hangar for the dedication. It had been nearly a year since Branson was in New Mexico to celebrate the completion of the runway.

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The next step to privatizing space?
Sad thing is this:
He has a spaceport terminal, but no spacecraft for it

hi op

branson is an idealist much like sinclair
he is one of us, if he could help the causes silently then he would
can non of you remember wen branson was bidding for the lottery liscence
he promised a self reliant charity, one that takes only what it needs to run
then camelot got the liscence, and pi**ed millions on non causes

sorry....ranting..

Well he's getting a few million from NASA to finish a spacecraft some engineers want to hitch a ride on.

The first successful flight to 'space' by Virgin Galactic to win that Ansari X Prize was well below 1/3rd of achieving orbital velocity, but I'm sure there is something of interest that NASA wants to study first hand. To be fair SpaceShipOne did achieve what would be considered controlled hypersonic flight, at microgravity altitude.

Originally posted by Illustronic
The first successful flight to 'space' by Virgin Galactic to win that Ansari X Prize [...]

A small nitpick, but Virgin Glactic had nothing to do with the Ansari X Prize. Scaled Composites led by Burt Rutan won the Ansari X Prize with their SpaceShipOne. The two companies started their joint venture only _after_ Burt Rutan's ship won the prize.