Sunday, October 01, 2006

Space = Wow

Here is an update on SpaceShipTwo.

http://www.space.com/news/060929_spaceship2_wow.html

It is definitely awesome to see the progress of private companies in space exploration and development. Too bad NASA was getting in the way for too long (since its beginnings actually), but this is another topic.

Here is something tasty from the article, though.

Virgin Galactic officials said more than 65,000 people have registered their interest to ride a SpaceShipTwo vehicle into suborbital space, with more than 200 already reserving their seats by making a payment deposit.

... to carry paying passengers into suborbital space at a starting ticket price of $200,000 each.

The article does not mention what is the size of deposit. It might be available on their website. However, it follows that folks at Virgin Galactic (or one of their branches who handles this) can already see a flow of cash and interest. Speaking of interest,
Virgin Galactic also keeps in mind the big money here, check this out:

Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo vehicles ... could even be modified later to carry a 1,763-pound (800-kilogram) science payload into suborbital space for about $2 million should the market demand warrant it, the spaceline’s president Will Whitehorn said.

This would definitely be the way to go for Virgin Galactic. And at a 2500 dollars per kilogram, it sounds like a very good price for those who need to deploy relatively small space objects into near orbit. Although, SpaceShipTwo does not sound like a ship to deliver something into orbit (it doesn't have enough angular speed at the rise of its travel to actually launch something into orbit). This can be adjusted if the load was capable of self-propulsion.

This is definitely a good update on the progress of SpaceShipTwo.

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