Virgin Hotels plan their first space hotel
First he commits to take us to space, and now he’s planning to offer us a room in space! That’s the vision of billionaire entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson. As Virgin Galactic gets ready to to offer commercial space travel in the next 18 months, Branson is hardly content and announced his plans to launch the Virgin Hotel brand internationally… and beyond, with space hotels plans on the drawing board. Virgin Galactic’s SpaceshipTwo, an aircraft built by aviation engineer Burt Rutan and designed to carry paying customers into suborbital space, had its first crewed flight in the California desert in July. SpaceShipTwo is now complete and 18 months away from taking people into space. Virgin Galactic aims to become the world’s first commercial company to promote space tourism and has already received $45 million in deposits from 330 customers eager to get a glimpse of space and more than 100,000 people have shown serious interest in the $200,000 ride. According to Branson, establishing hotels in space means his tourists will have a base for shuttle flights over the moon. “We are looking at hotels in space. We love the moon,” the tycoon said, adding that he was also interested in launching “small satellites into space” for the benefit of schools and universities. The key to Virgin’s design is overcoming the two most dangerous stages in space travel: launch and re-entry. The SpaceShipTwo is released from the underbelly of its carrier aircraft, White Knight Two, at an altitude of 15km. Once it breaks free, it will fire its rockets and take six very wealthy passengers on a 2 ½ hour ride into the Earth’s thermosphere at approximately three times the speed of sound. This eliminates the risks involved in igniting an enormous amount of highly flammable fuel on a launch pad. Once it has reached suborbital space, SpaceShipTwo passengers will be able to view the Earth from portholes next to their seats, or unbuckle their seatbelts and float in zero gravity.Space tourism is clearly turning popular among the rich. Just recently Boeing announced plans to sell tickets for a rocket ride to the International Space Station and Space Adventures Ltd has already been selling seats aboard the Russian-built Soyuz spaceship. Its last passenger was Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte, who paid $35 million for a 10-day trip to space.
That’s a whole new meaning to ‘out-of-this-world’!