Capitalist Pigs (and Tourists) in Space!

I couldn't resist making a Muppets allusion in the title! And speaking of titles, if Matt Drudge has another funny headline contest, I nominate his title for this piece: "VIRGIN MOGUL STARTS SPACECRAFT BUILDING COMPANY..." Is it just me, or does it sound like a sexually-frustrated mogul somewhere is getting ready to assemble an entire fleet of spacecraft by hand? Hee hee!

Anyway, for those of us who have been following the recent success of private efforts at space exploration (and for those who hold out some hope that space tourism might become affordable in their lifetimes), this is indeed good news.

British entrepreneur, Sir Richard Branson, has teamed up with aerospace designer, Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites to form a new aerospace production company. The new firm will build a fleet of commercial suborbital spaceships and launch aircraft.

Called The Spaceship Company, the new entity will manufacture launch aircraft, various spacecraft and support equipment and market those products to spaceliner operators. Clients include launch customer, Virgin Galactica -- formed tby Branson to handle space tourist flights.

The bad new: Tickets will be for $200,000.

At present, seats onboard Virgin Galactic spaceships are price tagged at $200,000 each.

But Branson hopes that this seat price will drop over time. "Our aim is to bring the price down,"he said.

...

"We would like to be in development and in experimental test flying by the end of 2007. And we would like to be operating commercially by the end of 2008," Whitehorn said. "But this is a unique project. We've made it very clear …that we are not going to be hidebound to a particular timetable."

The good news: The company hopes to be in space very soon, expects to be able to bring down prices, and sees no obstacles in its path.

-- CAV