We are one step closer to real space tourism. On Monday March 22, 2010 the Virgin Galactic spaceship Enterprise (geek love for that name). successfully completed its first captive carry flight. with its launch vehicle/mothership Eve.
This all started with the X Prize - $10 million to the first privately built craft to safely carry a human pilot into space twice. Virgin, the parent company of Virgin Airline, sponsored Burt Rutan. If you don't know Rutan, I'll just say that if you a new and innovative design to do things no other plane has done before, you go to Rutan.
No surprise, his design which featured a launch vehicle (WhiteKnightOne) that flew up to about 50,000 feet, then released the spacecraft, SpaceShipOne, was the winner.
Rutan redesigned things for commercial flight, making the new spacecraft design (called SpaceShipTwo) able to hold 6 passengers. Tickets are available for $200k, with deposits as low as $20k currently being accepted.
Anyone feel like loaning me some money?
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