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Virgin boss signs deal with Mojave Aerospace Ventures
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Spaceflight Participant ![]() ![]()
Joined: Tue Jun 22, 2004 3:40 pm
Posts: 78 Location: Birmingham, UK ![]() |
Well it looks like Richard Branson of Virgin fame has got in the business as previously guessed with Burt Rutan:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3693020.stm Quote: Virgin boss in space tourism bid The flights could be priced at £115,000 Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson has announced his company has signed an agreement worth £14m to secure the first commercial flights into space. The deal with the US firm which owns the technology, could be worth millions over the next 15 years depending on the number of space vehicles built. Prices for each seat into space are expected to start at around £115,000. Do people think they'll be using SpaceShipOne, or Tier2, or A.N.Other? What do you think of the price? etc.. ~Dan |
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Spaceflight Trainee ![]() ![]()
Joined: Mon May 31, 2004 5:29 pm
Posts: 40 ![]() |
"Virgin Galactic", with commercial flights starting 2007-2008.
I watched the entire conference live on Sky News. Quite amazing stuff. There's obviously a market there for £100K flights, and it seems they've done their number crunching. These initial customers will subsidise the cost of refining the technology for even cheaper flights, opening a yet bigger market, with what they predict will be an "exponential" growth model. This is more important than the rest of the X-Prize IMHO. Space technology is nothing without business, as we all know, and finally we have the business to back it up. From the man who owns a huge commercial airline company no less. This is it! |
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Moon Mission Member ![]() ![]()
Joined: Fri Jan 09, 2004 11:52 am
Posts: 1401 Location: Exeter, Devon, England ![]() |
does this mean there might actually be a chance of getting to space from Great Britain! hellll yeah all sounds good to me, lets have it! Nice to see all that speculation over the years of millions of pounds in space tourism havnt fizzled out but started to fruit! Would be interesting if bigelow looked at this n thought about hooking up their inflatable habitats with all of this! so who thinks in their life time they will actally leave planet earth?
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Spaceflight Participant ![]() ![]()
Joined: Thu Apr 29, 2004 6:40 pm
Posts: 67 Location: Toronto, Ontrio, Canada ![]() |
Well, Robiwan!
I hope you have the 186,000 dollars US [300,000 Ibs] to spend. I wish I did. ![]() If you do lack a few pence, may I suggest start a letter writing campaign to your MPs, to pass legislation to legalize a SPACE LOTTERY in the UK. cheerio. ![]() |
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Space Walker ![]() ![]()
Joined: Wed Aug 11, 2004 2:05 pm
Posts: 173 ![]() |
this is great stuff. historical.
the begginings of the private manned space industry!!! _________________ Thank you very much Mister Roboto For helping escape when I needed most Thank you Thank you |
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Moderator ![]() ![]()
Joined: Thu Jun 03, 2004 11:23 am
Posts: 3745 Location: Hamburg, Germany ![]() |
I read the news of the deal just before going to the forums.
The deal will cause economies of scale which will reduce the investment costs of the SpaceShipOne-versions first by the increase of volume and number of seats second by the number of SSOs ordered. This in fact is a great success of the XPRIZE Foundation - and the breakthrough perhaps. Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist) |
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Launch Director ![]() ![]()
Joined: Sat Jul 31, 2004 8:25 am
Posts: 19 Location: Sweden ![]() |
Things are moving along, indeed. Also, private orbital flights and even hotels might become reality in a not-too-distant future, with the help of a new space prize:
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/bi ... 40927.html Exciting times. I wonder if this is how it must have felt for those who lived during the childhood of flight... |
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Space Station Commander ![]() ![]()
Joined: Sat May 22, 2004 8:59 am
Posts: 578 Location: Zurich ![]() |
Saw Branson (or at least Virgin Galatic) made the front page of a major French daily and got a CNN spot, both this morning. At least the profile is coming back up again ... however, and I may have missed it, I don't think CNN mentioned SS1's up-and-coming X-prize flight at all.
DKH _________________ Per aspera ad astra |
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Launch Director ![]() ![]()
Joined: Fri Oct 10, 2003 7:28 am
Posts: 19 Location: Belgium (Antwerp) ![]() |
It will be and I certainly hope there will be more CEOs/Corporations willing to spend big $ € ... on space tourism. Imagine it's the year 2010 ... not a long wait for what I think will be amazing times ... Zzzzzz
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Space Walker ![]() ![]()
Joined: Wed Aug 11, 2004 2:05 pm
Posts: 173 ![]() |
we are living exciting times indeed.if this deals go to fruition, years from now 2004 will be referred to as the first year of the "second(true) space age"
_________________ Thank you very much Mister Roboto For helping escape when I needed most Thank you Thank you |
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Space Station Member ![]() ![]()
Joined: Mon Apr 12, 2004 4:16 am
Posts: 322 ![]() |
either way, its a great time
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Spaceflight Enthusiast ![]() ![]()
Joined: Wed Sep 29, 2004 1:02 am
Posts: 1 ![]() |
Hold on, hold on,
RB has been known to use speculative announcements to promote his brand in the past. He offered to by BA's old concordes, for example. This is probably good, but I can t help being suspicous of his commitment. Blue skies and soft landings, Dave H. |
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Moon Mission Member ![]() ![]()
Joined: Tue Jul 15, 2003 8:46 pm
Posts: 1218 Location: Kapellen, Antwerp, Belgium, Europe, Planet Earth, the Milky Way Galaxy ![]() |
dave_h wrote: Hold on, hold on, RB has been known to use speculative announcements to promote his brand in the past. He offered to by BA's old concordes, for example. This is probably good, but I can t help being suspicous of his commitment. Blue skies and soft landings, Dave H. If it's related to Burt Rutan, you can trust him.. they had several projects in the past and they all became reality ![]() And it wasn't his fault, they just didn't wanted to sell him those concordes. _________________ Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible. - Lord Kelvin, 1892 |
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Spaceflight Trainee ![]() ![]()
Joined: Thu Jan 15, 2004 1:26 am
Posts: 23 Location: Alba ![]() |
virgair wrote: Well, Robiwan! I hope you have the 186,000 dollars US [300,000 Ibs] to spend. £ not lbs ![]() Im sure Richard Branson is not making it up, as said above, the reason he couldnt buy Concorde is because BA wouldnt sell them. They clearly didnt want anyone to make a success of concorde ( so they wouldnt look bad ) |
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Moderator ![]() ![]()
Joined: Thu Jun 03, 2004 11:23 am
Posts: 3745 Location: Hamburg, Germany ![]() |
As I realized late this moment the Branson deal contribute a very big part to the amortization of the investment into SpaceShipOne.
The first amortization rate is the XPRIZE if the next or the at least the third flight is successful (I trust it will). This rate is 10 million dollars. According to www.xprizenews.org the deal gets Scaled/Mojave 14 million english pounds - I don't know what's that in dollars today but it's around 10 million dollars too I suppose. So Mojave Aerospace will have nearly 20 millions back after they have won the prize and got the monay from Branson. This short time of amortization will increase the interest of other teams and firms to construct and build private manned spacecrafts all over the world I think. Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist) |
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