The newspaper Irish Independent has a profile of businessman Tom Higgins, best known for making millions with a psychic hotline. At the end of the piece Higgins discusses his other major claim to fame: being one of the first two Irishmen to sign up for a suborbital spaceflight for space tourism. It looks like, though, he needs his staff to clean their crystal balls or reshuffle their Tarot cards: “Next year will probably (he can’t say for certain — even the psychics aren’t sure) see Higgins in space.” In fact, next year is very unlikely, unless Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites have made far more progress on SpaceShipTwo than they have let on in public.
Higgins is vying with Bill Cullen to be first. “According to Higgins, he had his name down first and has paid, but Cullen is mates with Richard Branson, who owns Virgin Galactic, which is sending the spaceship into space,” the article notes. “Higgins, ever with an eye to publicity, wanted there to be a space quiz on the Late Late Show to decide the owner of the seat on the first space ride but Cullen apparently would not agree to this and now a draw is supposed to take place.” Shouldn’t those psychics be able to tell Higgins if he’ll go first?
Mr Higgins is not known for being shy of publicity, be it good or bad. Most publicity around him and his various nefarious psychic business activities is usually bad publicity