Mars Needs Women
... really I've just been spoiling for an excuse to use that phrase. Love it. Love. It.
Billionaire playboy and rumpled mess Richard Branson has announced the founding of Virgin Galactic, the world's first commercial space passenger venture.
Within the decade, Branson plans to take paying customers to space. At 115K quid a pop, it's not exactly a train ride to Altoona, but think about this: you will be able to pay $300,000 in 2009 for something that has been dreamt of-- and utterly impossible-- for the entire span of recorded human history. That is super f***ing badass.
In other news, Branson has licensed Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne technology for his vehicle fleet.
In other other news, it looks like this Wednesday Rutan's crew will start making the actual non-beta-test flights that should win them the X-Prize.
The future is now, folks.
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You know, alot of people are
You know, alot of people are talking shite about Branson, and that this space scheme is too expensive to be cost-effective, or only caters to the super-ric and what about the globe's peons, etc etc etc.
For my part, I found the name for his new enterprise a wee bit ambitious. "Virgin Orbital" maybe. "Virgin Almost-sort-of-in-space" say.
But I'm with Johno.
It IS superf***ing badass. And as soon as I buy a house and sell it for a nice profit, I'm buying a ticket.