He found this technology in SpaceShipOne, the brainchild of legendary aircraft designer, Burt Rutan. Funded by Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, SpaceShipOne successfully completed three spectacular manned sub-orbital flights in 2004, thus winning the $10 million Ansari X-Prize. Virgin licensed the unique technology and ordered five scaled-up, commercial versions of the spacecraft to be called SpaceShipTwo along with two carrier aircraft named WhiteKnightTwo, and in the autumn of 2004 Virgin Galactic was announced to the world.
The US$200 000 (approximately R1.5 million) ticket price includes three days of pre-flight preparation and hospitality, including G-force acclimatisation. The two-hour spaceflight itself will propel the six passengers and two pilots out of the atmosphere at over three times the speed of sound, to a peak altitude of around 70 miles. Here the astronauts will leave their seats to enjoy around four minutes of weightlessness and a life-changing view up to 1 000 miles in any direction, allowing them to see the curvature of the earth, the thin ribbon of atmosphere and the blackness of space.
