Speaking of space travel!
Hot on the heels of my post this morning, ABC News is reporting that Richard Branson, overlord of Virgin airlines (and music, mobiles, etc), has signed a deal with the US company behind SpaceShipOne, the front runner for the X-Prize and the first privately owned ship to travel to space. He wants to send “thousands” of fee-paying astronauts into orbit within the next five years.
The company, dramatically called “Virign Galactic”, plans to launch its maiden flight in three years, making space travel possible “for ordinary people”. Of course, “ordinary” means being able to fork out $291,000 per flight (about £115,000 in GPB) per flight, or about the cost of a modest house. Again, technical problems abound, but the new era of space travel may well be here!
(For the trivia minded, “space” is defined as 100km above Earth, roughly where the atmosphere is too little to worry about it, but it’s basically arbitrary. And don’t forget “astronaut” basically means anyone who’s gone into space - for Virgin Galactic, you need only 3 days training!)