Video - Richard Branson about Spaceport Sweden

On September 5, Richard Branson visited Sweden and made a exclusive interview for Fredrik Andersson at the Swedish TV channel TV4.

Watch the video

- Do you think that we will travel to space in the same way as we travel to for example Thailand today?

- I don’t think that people will travel to space in the same way they travel to Thailand. Having said that I think that the technology that we are developing at Virgin Galactic for space travels may well enable you to go to Thailand from Scandinavia in half an hour by popping you out of the Earths atmosphere and then straight back again at an affordable price. I think that in your lifetime that is a possibility.

- Is that the next step for Virgin Galactic?

- That is the next step for Virgin Galactic. The first step for Virgin Galactic is to let people marvel and enjoy the experience of going into space. The next step will be to try to see if we can use the technology to get people to travel very quickly around the world.

- You also work together with some people up at Esrange in northern Sweden. How does that collaboration go along?

- It’s going well. We would love to sent people up to experience the northern lights from space. Sweden has been very welcoming and very enthusiastic on that, so I am hopeful that quit soon after that we have started our space program from New Mexico,… that hopefully the next base will be in Northern Sweden. People will be able to spend nights in your Icehotel night time and day time go up into space and marvel at the northern lights.

- Could you give us a date on when the first flights will be launched from New Mexico and from Sweden?

- The mothership is going to fly in three weeks time from the Mohave dessert, and that is the mothership that takes the spaceship into space. The spaceship will be ready in another nine months, and then we will have nine to twelve months of extensive testing. So realistically we are talking about a couple of years before New Mexico and maybe 2 and a half to three years before Sweden.

- So that will leave us 2012 maybe?

- Roughly

- Ok

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