Out of this world
Two companies are set to give the first tourists a glimpse of outer space – the kind of adventure rich mainlanders crave, writes Denise Tsang
Please fasten your seat belt. The next destination is the edge of outer space.
Fly Me to the Moon won’t be just a song any more or part of science fiction after the first commercial space tour is scheduled to blast off later this year via Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic. Another space tourism firm, Amsterdam-based Space Expedition Corp (SXC), will launch soon afterwards.
The cost of admission into the astronauts’ club is a minimum US$100,000 for a 60-minute space tour on SXC. Virgin Galactic’s 120-minute tour costs US$250,000.
Since Virgin Galactic was launched in 2005, about 600 people round the world have placed deposits for a space trip, the company said.
Both will let space tourists experience about five minutes of weightlessness in pitch-black daytime sky with a view of a curved earth under their feet.
The SXC flights will take off from either Mojave, California, or the Caribbean island of Curacao. It will take about four minutes to get to space, and the spacecraft will be travelling at three times the speed of sound up to about 100 kilometres above the earth, or the boundary to space called the Karman Line.
Then it will stay for about five minutes before returning to the base station.