Virgin Galactic to add five more spaceships
Virgin Galactic, billionaire Richard Branson’s space travel venture, plans to order five more spaceships and aims to turn a profit within five years of its commercial launch in 2010, a company official said this week.
Prospective space travelers have so far placed deposits totaling more than $31 million for tickets that cost $200,000 each and would give them five minutes in space, said Alex Tai, the company’s group director.
“In the short term, we have firm orders for five spaceships and options for seven. . . . We believe there is a very strong market,” Tai said Thursday in an interview at the Singapore Airshow.
About 80,000 people from 120 countries have shown interest in these commercial space flights that are likely to start in 2010. Seriously interested travelers are asked to deposit at least $20,000, according to Virgin Galactic’s website.
Virgin, which aims to be the first company to take paying passengers into space on a regular basis, will invest $250 million in the space program, Tai said.
Asked when the company would become profitable, he said: “I imagine it will be inside the first five years.”
Virgin’s SpaceShipTwo, unveiled last month and to be tested this year, will be able to carry eight people into suborbital space. Virgin intends to start with one flight a week and ramp up to 14 a week, Tai said.
For $200,000, Virgin will prepare space travelers over three days for their two-hour flight beyond Earth’s atmosphere that will culminate in five minutes in space. The craft will initially be launched from Mojave, Calif., but will eventually take off from a New Mexico spaceport.
Virgin Galactic is one of several contenders in the commercial space race. Others include Astrium, the space arm of European aerospace firm EADS; Blue Origin, started by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos; Space Exploration Technologies Corp., created by PayPal co-founder Elon Musk; and Bigelow Aerospace, started by hotelier Robert Bigelow.
The leader in the field is Virginia-based Space Adventures, which started the space tourism phenomenon in 2001 when it put U.S. businessman Dennis Tito on a Russian Soyuz craft for a reported $20 million.
