The
London Sunday Times has a downer story on Richard
Branson’s pie-in-the-sky space endeavor, Virgin Galactic. This effort, started in 2006, was to
transport regular citizens into space. So
far this Virgin enterprise president has collected $80 million in deposits (@
$250,000 a pop) from aspiring neophyte astronauts for the trip of a lifetime …
see:
The Sunday Times Article and Branson has spent a few hundred million himself.
The only trouble is that some of these depositor’s lifetimes
may run out before this spacecraft actually rockets them into space (apparently
for only a few short minutes). The initial
launch date set was 2007 and this has been continually revised back … the last
ETD being Christmas, 2013 … which didn’t happen. The next target is August, 2014 for which NBC
has promised extensive coverage … see:
Next Big Future Piece.
Apparently the rocket that was used in the first VSS Enterprise
(now version 2) was underpowered for passengers and had only been able to
achieve two sub-orbital test-flights… for extensive details on this evolving
process and newer developments see:
Dailytech Story.
I am not usually as skeptical as I am for this type of endeavor,
but I have, in the past, expressed doubts about Richard Branson’s vision and
New Mexico’s excessive spending on a spaceport … see:
Beam Me Up Scotty. Now that such flights may possibly (someday)
happen, it just seems to this blogger that a few minutes in suborbital space is
hardly worth $250,000 and being exposed to the many risks involved … let alone
Branson turning it all into a commercial success.
