Space, The Final Frontier for Sir Richard Branson

From Tech Digest:

Creating world-class Virgin Airlines gave Sir Richard Branson his first breath of rarefied air. Now, he’s announced a step towards commercial space travel by launching The Spaceship Company through Virgin Galactic. It’s a joint deal with aviation expert, Burt Rutan, who waltzed off with the Ansari X prize of a cool £5.6m.($10m US) last year by building the first private craft to vacate the earth’s atmosphere.

Fast forward to this week. Sir Richard has ordered 5 SpaceShipTwo craft. About 28,000 lunatics are on a waiting list to toss £115,000 on a 2-hour scrape with death into the stratosphere and 5 minutes of weightlessness. Virgin Galactic hopes to have the enterprise up and running in about two years time, ferrying up to 7 passengers on each trip. At worse, the company is hoping to push the envelope of space travel for the masses by end of the decade.

Via The Scotsman.