Virgin Galactic set to launch in 2012

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Sir Richard Branson, chairman of Virgin Group, has said this week that Virgin Galactic will be ready to take its first passengers into space within 18 months.

“We just finished building SpaceShipTwo,” Branson told business executives in Kuala Lumpur earlier this week. “We are 18 months away from taking people into space.”

The project will take passengers into suborbital flight, with the spaceplane being lofted about 68 miles into a region of the Earth’s atmosphere called the thermosphere. As the craft hits the peak of its trip, passengers will have a few minutes to unbuckle their seatbelts and experience a feeling of weightlessness, before the plane begins its descent again.

The aircraft, named SpaceshipTwo and built by aviation engineer Burt Rutan, had its first manned test flight earlier this year, when it took off from the Mojave Air & Space Port in California. The five-man test flight took just over six hours to complete, but the final run will only take about two and a half hours.

When the craft takes its first paying customers, it will launch from the $200 million Spaceport America in New Mexico, touted as the world’s first purpose-built commercial spaceport. Tickets will cost about $200,000, which is a little easier on the wallet than the Russian Soyuz spacecraft’s $45 million ticket. Then again, the Soyuz takes tourists all the way to the International Space Station, a good 210 miles above the Earth.

Virgin Galactic has already collected more than $45 million in deposits from seat-reserving customers, with over 330 passengers already signed up for flights once the project goes live. With the craft able to carry six passengers (and two pilots) at a time, Branson already has enough paying customers for 55 trips.

While Galactic’s inaugural flight is still 18 months off, Branson is already thinking about his next project. Alongside launching small satellites into space for educational purposes at schools and universities, the 60 year old tycoon has expressed his desire for space hotels and commercial flights to the moon. “We love the moon”, he said.