- Artists conception of WhiteKnightTwo and the SpaceShipTwo space tourism vehicle. (Credit: Virgin Galactic)
Well, with the economy crashing, the rich are escaping the carnage the only way they know how: by spending wildly on extravagant getaways. In this case, a 2-hour holiday to space.
That’s one conclusion that you can draw from the latest figures coming out of Virgin Galactic. Travel Weekly reports:
The Virgin Group offshoot has attracted around 320 bookings since it launched the programme, with most paying the original fare of $200,000, [Stephen] Attenborough told delegates at the ITT Conference in Dubai.
The number of passengers booked by July 2008 stood at 250.
Attenborough also said he thought tickets could fall to $50,000 or less, which is about half of what Virgin Galactic President Will Whitehorn had predicted not long ago.
Part of the reason for the uptick in sales is probably successful test flights of Virgin’s WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft. The vehicle completed its seventh flight on June 2 in a test that lasted 6 hours, its longest to date. The flight log reads:
All objectives completed. Pressurization and ECS worked as designed. Speed envelope expanded with the gear up and down to 340 KTAS. Peak altitude increased to 45,000 ft. Wind-up turns were performed to 2.5g’s. Engines were shut down and restarted per plan.
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