Sir Richard Branson was in India recently, promoting himself, his companies and space tourism. He sat down with NDTV with what appears to have been a fawning interviewer, at least according to the transcript:
NDTV: He is flamboyant. He is an adventure capitalist. And he makes a billion dollars before breakfast. Ladies and gentleman, in this special show, we have with us Sir Richard Branson.
Branson: You said I make billion dollars before breakfast. I think I’ll just won’t have breakfast the whole day.
The British mogul called India “one of the most exciting countries in the world at the moment. It’s a happening country.” He discussed many subjects, including his desire to set up a domestic Indian airline and his plans for Virgin Galactic.
“In July of this year, we will fly them over ship for the first time. At the end of the year, we will unveil a spaceship,” Branson said. “We will then have around nine months of test ride. And then, I am hoping that my parents and my children will be there on the first flight. And then we hope we will open it up to anyone who wishes to go into the space. Initially the price is not going to be cheap. Its two hundred thousand dollars. But I hope the price will come down. And hopefully, by the time your children are teenagers, they will then afford to go into the space.”
The interviewer asked about Star Trek’s William Shatner, who turned down an offer of a free flight into space. “He definitely made it clear that he was quite frightened to go into the space and I got a feeling that he will never actually go into the space,” Branson replied. “NASA lost about three per cent of all the people that they sent into the space.
“Their technology is about 50 years old. And the biggest problem they had was on the re-entry back into the Earth’s atmosphere. Our technology is brand new. And I think we have overcome some of the technical problems that NASA had, in particular the re-entry into the atmosphere,” Branson added.
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