Sees "A Very Strong Market" For Commercial Space Travel

Among the more far-reaching aerospace companies exhibiting at this week's 2008 Singapore Air Show was Virgin Galactic... which aims to keep its business plan on the ground, despite its goal of reaching for the stars.

During a Thursday interview with Reuters, company group director Alex Tai said the company now has five spaceships on order, with options for seven more -- a sign Virgin expects "a very strong market" for private, suborbital space travel.

To date, potential customers have placed deposits totaling over $31 million, against tickets that cost $200,000 per person for five minutes in space. But Tai said when it comes to the idea of traveling towards the stars -- if only briefly -- there's no sense in trying to make the math compute.

"It's silly to divide the $200,000 by that five minutes. It really is a life-time experience," he said.

As ANN reported, Virgin unveiled its SpaceShipTwo vehicle, designed and built by Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites, last month. The company hopes to start carrying paying passengers in 2010, initially starting with one flight per week but eventually ramping up to 14 flights per week, each carrying eight passengers.

Despite the high ticket prices, those prices don't come close to covering the startup costs of such an ambitious project. Virgin plans to invest about $250 million into the commercial space program, but Tai hopes Virgin Galactic will become a money-making operation in a relatively short time.

"I imagine it will be inside the first five years," he said.

Passengers on Virgin Galactic will go through three days of training -- including zero-gravity simulations -- for their two-hour flights, culminating in five minutes in space. Early flights will take off from Mojave, CA, though Virgin expects to move operations to New Mexico when Spaceport America is completed. That facility is currently under development.

FMI: www.virgingalactic.com