Space ferry gets frequent with Virgin Galactic

Since an Iranian-American tourist has taken her visit to the space, the popularity of space tourism has accelerated its pace. And to take advantage of this, many groups are coming forward to provide the best and cheap space tourism packages.

Of all the companies, the foremost is Virgin Group, which has come up with a prototype space ship for which the space lover can buy a ticket into space for a much cheaper price.

Anousheh Ansari, who became the first woman space tourist when she took off on a Russian rocket, had paid $20 million for the trip.

British entrepreneur and founder of the Virgin Group, Richard Branson on Thursday unleashed a full-sized scale model of the suborbital craft in which his company slates to take customers into space.

The name of the prototype of the Virgin craft is SpaceShipTwo, that could bring down the price of space travel to just 1 per cent of what it costs now. An initial ticket price is US$200,000 for a suborbital tourist flight, including a week of flight training.

"Literally it's going to be an out of earth experience. We hope to enable millions of people to go into space in an affordable manner,” Branson says.

The suborbital spaceplane is to be operated by Virgin Galactic, a spaceline in Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Group. This spaceline intends to offer sub-orbital spaceflights and later orbital spaceflights to the paying public.

Galactic has contracted with The Spaceship Company (a joint venture between Scaled Composites and Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Group of the UK) to build five SpaceShipTwos.

According to its designer Burt Rutan, the new craft will fly higher and have a longer downrange than SpaceShipOne, an experimental air-launched suborbital spaceplane that used a hybrid rocket motor.

The Virgin Galactic spaceship will have capacity of six paying passengers and two pilots. Spaceship’s cabin has reclining seats, large portholes and room for passengers to float around. During the two and a half hour space flight the passengers are expected to experience about five minutes of weightlessness as they enter zero gravity.

The full-scale model of the SpaceShipTwo interior was unveiled at a technology show at the Javits Convention Center in New York. It was the first public appearance of any kind of SpaceShipTwo.

Reportedly, so far, more than 200 people have already signed up for the trip on Virgin Galactic and 65 thousands more have registered as possible passengers. The company gasconades that Paris Hilton, Weaver and others have expressed their interests for the mission. Branson also expressed his intention to be among the first passengers.

Company's target is to transport 500 people in its first year; the number is approximately equal to the people who have gone up in 45 years of space travel.

Test flights are expected to begin late next year, with the first tourist flights in 2008 from Mojave, Calif., and later from a proposed $225-million facility near Upham in New Mexico called Spaceport America.

Apart from Virgin, other joining the space race is California-based SpaceDev, a space development company that is most prominent for its spaceflight and microsatellite work. Company CEO and founder, rocket engineer Jim Benson said his new firm, Benson Space, will offer flights to the heavens and beyond aboard its six-seat Dream Chaser in two or three years, in collaboration with NASA.

Experts assert suborbital space tourism could generate billions in ticket sales in the next 10 years of period.