I first saw an article about Virgin’s Richard Branson on Wired magazine couple months ago. Virgin announced that it was launching a public service where people can experience zero-gravity.
Basically, Virgin is taking space travel into reality for normal people like you and me.
Anyways, I was SiteHoppin’ along for some random Entrecard tech blogs and found a blog post that now you can go make your reservations.
How much does it cost?
Flights require three days of training and cost 200k with a 20k deposit.
Wow, it sounds like a lot of fun, especially if you get to be weightless.
What do you get?
The Mother Ship known as Space Ship Two ( 2nd version of spaceship ) flies to an altitude of about 50,000 feet and disconnects a separate space ship. This rocket ship fires up and shoots into outer space at about 360,000 feet, for the ride of your life. Passengers will experience 3 to 4 g’s during the initial launch into space. The zero gravity environment is said to last about 5 minutes before its decent back to earth. The whole trip takes about 2 1/2 hours.
Although the whole trip only lasts about two and half hours, if you got money to burn, this might be better than most “earthy” experiences such as skydiving, snowboarding, etc…etc… If you are interested, go get a spot for your first space travel here.
7 Responses to Virgin Galatic, 3 Hour Space Travel, ready for reservations, can you afford it?
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I have much better use for that kind of money!
me too, better to invest it on stocks or properties… 😀
invest in the new “Beer Stock Market”:
http://sitehoppin.com/blog/2008/03/17/coming-soon-beer-economy-and-beer-stocks-invest-and-become-co-owners-of-sitehoppincom/
Sir Richard Branson talks about protecting the environment and possibly using non-fossil based fuel on his airline planes. Yet how can this JOY RIDE on the Virgin Galatic help in the green house effect caused by this WhiteKnightTwo vehicle?
If it is used for purely scientific reason for the flights, then sure, it is justified flight. But if it is mostly used for JOY RIDE for the rich, then the carbon footprint is too much.
Yes, I think it’s mostly for personal enjoyment. If you had couple billion dollars in the bank, you would probably go on a space joy ride too, wouldn’t you?
But in all, this might actually help too for future space travelers. (It’s gotta start somewhere right?)
It might help for future space travelers, I guess. But if space travel is necessary in the future, I don’t think a commercial rocket company (Virgin Galatic) would be the one to spend the money for the innovations. I would think ESA, or NASA or Russia would spend the money to do that. I think the ‘might’ is a small probability. After all, Virgin is out to make a profit (which is fine) but I don’t see them using them actively doing research for space travel. From unexpected result during this business helps future space travel could happen. But at the cost of all those joy-rides, I would not be an efficient usage of money or the carbon footprint.
If I had a couple of billion dollars, I think I would spend the money somewhere else. More research for energy efficiency, etc.
Oops, I didn’t put my latest post as a reply. My reply is below.