More on Virgin’s upcoming plans

Marketing Week reports Thursday that Virgin Galactic will be unveiling more than just the design of White Knight Two and SpaceShipTwo during an event at the American Museum of Natural History in New York on January 23. “We will be unveiling the entire design and structure of the project, and it looks nothing like what […]

2008: “Year of the Spaceship”

That’s the designation that Virgin Galactic is giving to the coming year, according to a Flight International article that reports on a speech given by Will Whitehorn on Thursday at a space conference in the UK. Virgin anticipates a busy year, highlighted by the first test flight of the White Knight 2 carrier aircraft in […]

What’s in it for space travel agents

Virgin Galactic has been signing up travel agents around the world to help it sell its suborbital spaceflights. So what’s in it for the travel agents, besides some publicity and a chance to be on the cutting edge of what could be an emerging market in the overall tourism industry? Money, as Australia’s The Daily […]

Psychics can’t foretell future of space tourism

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, […]

An unlikely list of customers

An article in The West Australian reports that a Virgin Galactic seat will be auctioned off Saturday night during the Chinese Chamber of Commerce annual ball in Perth. Curiously, the article claims that “Bill Gates, Warren Buffet [sic], Oprah Winfrey, Sir Richard Branson and Donald Trump have already signed up for a space flight”. Branson, […]

Space tourism not so popular in Jacksonville

Richard Branson spoke at an event Tuesday night in Jacksonville, Florida, talking about his various ventures, including Virgin Galactic, which led to this exchange as reported in the Florida Times-Union:

Branson began building his business empire in the 1970s when he established Virgin Records, initially as a mail-order record outlet and later a record label. […]

The wide world of space tourism

Cue the “thrill of victory, agony of defeat” theme music…

Our first stop in our world tour is Israel, where the first travel agency certified by Virgin Galactic has started selling tickets. According to the director of that agency, Galactic Dreamlines, most Israelis who have expressed an interest in suborbital spaceflight to date are businesspeople […]

ISPS Day 2: Spaceports, business models, and astronauts

Above: a panel of space travelers discuss the spaceflight experience on Thursday afternoon. From left: Jeff Hoffman, Jay Buckey, Michael Lopez-Alegria, Anousheh Ansari, Dan Barry, Janice Voss, and John Herrington.

The second and final day of the International Symposium for Personal Spaceflight started off with a focus on spaceports (actually, it started off with […]

ISPS Day 1 wrap-up

(The picture above doesn’t have anything to do directly with the conference, it’s just a nice view of the Moon rising around sunset Wednesday as seen from the conference site in Las Cruces.)

Yesterday’s sessions of the International Symposium for Personal Spaceflight didn’t have any groundbreaking revelations, but there were still some interesting developments […]

Miscellaneous news

Some brief items in recent days associated with space tourism:

Virgin Galactic is making inroads in India, establishing relationships with travel agencies there. Virgin is charging 8 million rupees for a suborbital flight, which works out to just over $200,000 at current exchange rates. Back in the US, how is one travel agency selling Virgin […]

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