In the kind of development that sounds like something out of a science fiction novel, a celebrity British billionaire on Monday unveiled a spaceship designed to take paying customers into space for the low, low price of $200,000. Roughly 300 people have already signed up, and flights are tentatively scheduled to begin in 2011.
The link above will take you to the full story, and this link will take you to a slideshow.
You may know the man behind all this — his name is Richard Branson, and he’s led quite the remarkable life. Branson owns a record label and an airline (among many other businesses) and is known as something of a daredevil. Take, for example, the time in 1987 that he and his cohorts became the first to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a hot air balloon, reaching speeds of 130 miles per hour.
Since then he’s set his sights even higher, culminating in the unveiling of the first-ever commercial spaceship this week, dubbed ‘VSS Enterprise’ in tribute to the many British and American navy ships that have borne that name, and also to the fictional ‘Star Trek’ spacecraft that has been a staple of American pop culture for over 40 years.
As to the obvious question of the ship’s safety — three people died during an engine-test failure in 2007 — Branson seems confident that any such problems are behind him. H says he plans to go up aboard Enterprise himself, and that he plans to take his mother with him. Godspeed, sir.