If you have a love for outer space and $US450,000 (around $625,000) burning a hole in your pocket, then boy do we have the opportunity for you! Virgin Galactic is now selling tickets for space trips to the public, according to CNN.
Reservations opened up today, and if you want to hitch a ride you’ll have to fork over a $US150,000 ($208,315) deposit to snag a spot, then pay the rest before the flight. Tickets are available to 1,000 customers for trips later this year. That will generate Richard Branson’s company a cool $US450,000,000 (around $625,000,000) if all the tickets should sell.
Virgin Galactic already has 600 reservations from the first round of ticket sales. By comparison, those tickets are a bargain. They cost just $US200,000 ($277,640) to $US250,000 ($347,050) for a spot on the ship. Things have apparently gotten a little more prestigious now.
Flights will take off from Spaceport America in New Mexico and will last just 90 minutes. That means you will be paying $US5,000 ($6,941) a minute or $US83.34 ($116) every second. Not cheap.
“The spaceship gracefully flips while astronauts enjoy several minutes of out-of-seat weightlessness and breath-taking views of Earth from the spaceship’s 17 windows,” the company said in a statement.
Last July, Branson was part of six crew members who travelled on the company’s space plane, the VSS Unity. Two months later, the FAA started an investigation into the flight after it deviated from course for 101 seconds.
Branson’s Virgin Galactic is one of three major players in the bored billionaire space race along with Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin. They all have the broad goal of commercial space travel in the future.
It’s really a brave new world we’re living in. Billionaires are flying around space for shits and giggles. Meanwhile you and I are just looking up at the sky hoping our check engine lights go away.