20k Down Can Get You Up Into Space

TheOzz writes "Virgin Galactic announced this week that space tourism will be a reality by 2008. The company is already taking $20,000 deposits for the estimated $200,000 seats on their new spaceships. You can reserve your seat today at the Virgin Galactic web site. The Virgin Group's Branson teamed up with SpaceShipOne builder Burt Rutan to form The Spaceship Company that will build these new commercial spaceships. They are building 9-person spaceships that will carry 7 paying passengers and two crew members, according to space.com. They report that test flights should start in 2007."

Comments

Annoying

[Reality Master 101]

Am I the only one that's annoyed by this?

This is not space travel. I don't care that a bunch of geeks in a room defined "space" as 100KM, space travel means CONTROLLED space travel. This is just shooting people really high and letting them fall to earth, at which point it's normal air travel.

We could fly before the Wright Brothers, but what made their accomplishment noteworthy was that it was controlled, powered flight. This is uncontrolled powered space travel. It's a stunt.

Space travel means an orbital insertion. Controlled powered space travel.

Granted, this is a necessary step. I'm glad they're doing it. But I hate all the hype they're putting into this. I'm afraid that people, once they figure out it's a very expensive stunt that isn't really space travel, are going to poison the well for this sort of thing.

Be honest: Would you really be impressed with someone who rode this thing, other than the fact that they were able to shell out 200 grand? Would you look at them as Astronauts? I wouldn't.

Bah.