Virgin Atlantic Licensing SpaceShipOne

Tigerquoll writes "According to the Australian Broadcasting Commission, British airline magnate Richard Branson has announced a plan for the world's first commercial space flights and has signed a technology licensing deal with Mojave Aerospace Ventures - the US company behind SpaceShipOne. See scaled composites' media release and the Virgin Galactic website"

Comments

Can't get to the hotel, yet

[Rxke]

That's cool, but nothing compared to ...

'America Space Prize' $50 mil.

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0409/27bigel ow /

for the first one that comes up with an orbital thingy to visit Bigelows ... SpaceHotels, Yeah!

Re:This is technological progress...

[gowen]

Well, the recent delay on the Pendolino is nothing to do with the trains, and everything to do with the fact that the West Coast Mainline tracks themselves hadn't been maintained sufficiently well to allow the trains to run on them.

Re:Quote from Burt Rutan

[Ariane 6]

"It could cost us up to $100 million to invest," Branson told reporters. "We've done quite a lot of research; we think there are about 3,000 people out there who would want to do this," Sir Richard told the BBC.

That's quite a bit for a one-off publicity stunt, entirely aside from the 14 Million Pounds already invested.

Re:Branson? Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Down under ? Richard Branson is british.

Re:foward planning!

[seanellis]

Branson had been in talks with the now-defunct Rotary Rocket company (also based in Mojave) as long ago as 1999.

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/1999/0705/6401140a.ht ml

Concorde

[victor_the_cleaner]

It really is unfortunate that Branson was not able to take over Concorde after BA and AF stopped supersonic passenger service.

I think Sir Richard could have done a good job of restoring Concorde to its former glory. SpaceShipOne is just his latest go-fast toy.

After all Branson speding a billion to play with his toys (SpaceShipOne, Concorde) is no different than any hobby we may have. Of course it is a billion, but overall it's a small percentage of his assets.

Re:Meanwhile, at Virgin Atlantic, the webmaster sa

[HeghmoH]

If you wanted suborbital flight, there's a dozen countries that could hook you up for this cheap.

Oh yeah, which ones?

I can count the number of countries that have demonstrated, cheap suborbital capability today on my nose. It's one, the USA, and it only has this capability courtesy of Burt Rutan and his financial backer Paul Allen. The US otherwise currently has no manned launch capability at all, suborbital or otherwise. The X-15 would have been perfect for cheap suborbital flights, but I don't know if it ever could have been as cheap as SSO, and it's also been dead and gone for a long, long time. The only two countries that can currently put a person anywhere into space are Russia and China, and neither one has a suborbital system. Of course they can send you on a suborbital flight, but it'll be using orbital hardware, and so it won't be much cheaper.

Maybe I'm totally missing something, but I don't believe your statement is correct.

Re:VSS Enterprise?

[Nexus Seven]

Errr, no.

Virgin not the first

[fiannaFailMan]

Virgin launched the worlds prototype discount airline

Actually, it was Freddy Laker's 'Skytrain' launched in 1973 that was the first no-frills airline. You turned up at the airport like at a train station, no advance booking, food for sale on the plame if you want it, or bring your own fish & chips. Laker found himself falling victim to dirty tricks from BOAC, (a forerunner of British Airways) that put him out of business. I remember a documentary showing Branson talking to Laker years later when BA were up to their old tricks against Virgin and Laker's advice was straightforward. "Sue the b@$#@*&s!" he said. According to the Wikipedia article, "As a tribute to Laker Airways, Virgin Atlantic Airways later named one of its Boeing 747s The Spirit of Sir Freddie."