The Associate Press

Richard Branson and aerospace designer Burt Rutan unveil a model of SpaceShipTwo.

Featured Topic | Posted 2 years 2 weeks ago

Is space tourism about to take off?

Want to fly into space? If you've got $200,000 lying around, your dream could come true as soon as next year. British billionaire Richard Branson on Wednesday unveiled SpaceShipTwo, a sleek craft he says will take tourists beyond earth's atmosphere starting in 2009.

Is private space travel leaving NASA behind?

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Ben likes: The new pioneers

Rand Simberg/The New Atlantis

Not long ago, the notion of any entity other than a government putting a payload—let alone a human being—into space seemed absurd to most people. After all, the space race had been between governments, and everyone knew that it took billions upon billions of dollars, and even then the rockets often failed. Who in the private sector could afford such an outlay on such a risky venture for such a seemingly small return?

Given the doubts about the market and the concerns about affordability and safety, it’s not surprising that the notion of private manned spaceflight suffered from what many in the emerging commercial space industry called “the giggle factor.” But in the last few years, the giggle factor has rapidly evaporated.

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Joel likes: Going private: The promise and danger of space travel

Tariq Malik/Space.com

The current spirit of today's privately funded human spaceflight efforts is akin to that of NASA's suborbital Mercury program in the 1960s. But there are stark differences, too. Spaceflight then was a matter of national prestige, with NASA and the U.S. reluctant to stretch risks of both pilots or spacecraft.

Commercial firms have a little more breathing room when it comes to risk.

"Space is risky, and somewhere, sometime over the next 10 years, we have to expect things are not always going to go well, and we have to ready for that," Whitesides said in a telephone interview.

Despite the increased risk, people will pay for a ride that goes fast and a ride that goes high, analysts say.

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