Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic charges customers $450,000 for space trip

Virgin Galactic, a spaceship owned by Richard Branson, has made its first commercial flight into space and charged passengers between $200,000 and $450,000 each.

The first journey into space, a trip of 50 miles from the Earth, was conducted on Thursday after Virgin Galactic twin-fuselage “mothership” aircraft left the Spaceport America, New Mexico, at 8:30 am local time and returned by 4:45 p.m.

The mothership, after gaining high altitude, had released VSS Unity, a rocket-powered plane that conveyed six crew members on a 90-minute flight out of Earth.

The crew members, who are on a government-funded research mission, are Italian Air Force Colonel, Walter Villadei and Lt. Col. Angelo Landolfi.

Also listed are the National Research Council of Italy engineer and Italian Air Force researcher, Pantaleone Carlucci, as well as Colin Bennett from Virgin Galactic.

READ ALSO:US approves SpaceX Starship debut flight to space

The 50 miles trip above Earth is termed the border of space by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the United States Air Force.

This is close to the 62 miles above earth, which is the internationally recognized boundary, called Karman Line.

Virgin Galactic has sold 800 tickets out of which 600 went for between $200,000 and $250,000 from 2005 to 2014 while an additional 200 had been sold for $450,000 since 2014.

The company will begin its tourism space travel, non-government-funded travel financed by the customers themselves, in August.

Virgin Galactic is racing to space amid competition from Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin.

Join the conversation

Opinions

Support Ripples Nigeria, hold up solutions journalism

Balanced, fearless journalism driven by data comes at huge financial costs.

As a media platform, we hold leadership accountable and will not trade the right to press freedom and free speech for a piece of cake.

If you like what we do, and are ready to uphold solutions journalism, kindly donate to the Ripples Nigeria cause.

Your support would help to ensure that citizens and institutions continue to have free access to credible and reliable information for societal development.

Donate Now