Space tourism: Galactic Gamble - Is the market Virgin's to lose?

Flight Global ^ | 14/04/09 | Rob Coppinger

[Freeport]

This is"a pure piece of risk capital and it is based upon the fact that we perceived at the time that the only way this was ever going to happen was if we did it. This is a high-risk venture," says Virgin Galactic president and 20-year Virgin group public relations veteran Will Whitehorn, reflecting on the origins of his spaceline at its headquarters in Piccadilly, London.

For $200,000 per seat that spaceline is offering in the next few years a few minutes of weightlessness with a cabin to float around in at a 110km (68miles) apogee during a 90min trip.The journey comprises 1h of spiralling to the 50,000ft (15,250m) air launch altitude with the WhiteKnight Two mothership, seconds of rocket-powered ascent into space at Mach4 in SpaceShip Two, followed by about 20min of glide back to the runway.

Making it happen means the Virgin group, Virgin Galactic's investor, has, says Whitehorn,"carried on investing. You're looking at buying a couple of big commercial planes as the scale of the investment, which for Virgin, with the kind of risk it is in, is a big, big project."

When he says big "commercial planes" Whitehorn is not talking Airbus A321, but the original jumbo: "It is a fully charged up, rack rate Boeing 747. You are talking that scale, [and] getting to commercialism,we'll be up in the $250-350 [million] range." That $350 million is for the prototype WK2 and SS2, all the equipment needed at the company's commercial launch site, New Mexico's Spaceport America, and one more operational mothership and four SpaceShip Twos.

                    

[31R1O]

Been done before:

http://www.google.com/virgle/

[cripplecreek]

For any real space tourism industry to begin making a dent will require at least a few orbits at a comparable price to the $200,000 plane ride.

[SunkenCiv]

I doubt it will ever make money. At best, it *could* lead to much more capital investment in order to produce hardware capable of putting lots of people into space; the same thing that happened with air travel, with the obvious proviso that the *trip* is all that can be sold, as there’s no “there” there. :’)

So far.

Thanks kevin.