Up, Up, and Away!
The SpaceShipTwo to be developed (within just a few years, I might add) is not going to be a simple retread up of SpaceShipOne. They're calling her the VSS Enterprise, but she's just the flagship of a planned fleet of several suborbital vehicles carrying at least 5 passengers each, and undertaking regular flights from various locales. Virgin Galactic hopes to be flying by 2007, and anticipates creating something like 3000 new, private-citizen astronauts over the course of five years.
Starting price: $190,000.
While it's quite true that such a price tag places suborbital flight out of reach of Joe Sixpack for now--or, for example, out of my reach--as price tags go I think it's reassuringly low. This is the first ticket price for the first commercial space tourism operator, folks. Throw in a little water under the bridge and some competition from other operators with different technology--many of whom are in the pipe as we speak--and you can bet that price will fall. Heck, other companies have been taking deposits on lower ticket prices for years; Virgin Galactic is just the first to break out from the pack. So everyone knows the price will get significantly lower; and they're already talking about how long it will take for it to drop to slightly more middle-class numbers, and about the possibilities for orbital flights in the foreseeable future, to boot. The mind reels.
Oh, and if you have any doubt left that space tourism is on the fast track to the mainstream and coming soon to an airport near you, let me throw this little factoid at you: 7Up has announced a promotional contest in which it will be giving at least one lucky winner a ticket into suborbital space. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/com...
Now you just look me in the eye and tell me that in 10 years, the McDonald's Monopoly game won't be giving that same prize to holders of both Boardwalk and Park Place. See, you can't do it.
And for that last stamp of legitimacy, the above linked article from The Australian includes the bit of news that "Futron Corporation, a marketing research firm, has estimated that by 2021, more than 15,000 passengers could be making suborbital flights." The last time I checked, that was a lot.
Real, commercial space flight is coming, folks. Heck, it's practically here. So if you've been betting against it so far, I'd say this is a pretty darned good time to stop.
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