Space Travel

There was a time when humans could do nothing but dream about space travel. It was something  we can only dream of doing. However, with the passage of time and advancement in technology, all that has changed. From the launching of satellites, to landing on the moon, we have gotten closer to that dream. With the millions of dollars pumped in to build crafts capable of travelling to space, we were able to send un-manned space crafts to planets like Mars. All those journeys to space were however done mainly for research purposes and not for leisure. If not that, then only highly trained astronauts and only a handful of people were able to fly to space. The idea of space tourism was basically just that, “an idea”. Today though, even that has changed. And the two people we could thank for that are Sir Richard Branson and Bert Rutan. The pair were able to turn the idea of space travel into a potentially multi million business.

Sir Richard Branson and Bert Rutan teamed up to give the people an opportunity to travel to space. They announced these plans on the 27^th of September 2004. Sir Richard Branson, the owner of the Virgin Group of Companies, signed contracts with Bert Rutan, the owner of Scaled Composites, to design and build the spacecraft, under the name of Virgin Galactic that would be used for these trips to space. Even though the ships were unveiled in January 2008, passengers had been signing up for the journey since 2005.

How the trips works is that the craft, SpaceShipTwo, will take passengers on a two and a half hour flight 360,000 feet above the Earth. Along the way they shall experience zero gravity for around four to five minutes. The brief suborbital flight shall end after the space craft re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere and glide back to the tarmac.

Since everything in the world comes at a price, this particular journey comes at a heavy one. Passengers will have to pay around $100,000 in order to purchase a ticket to one of these suborbital flights. One can’t deny the price being hefty. Ninetheless, by 2008, potential passengers had already deposited more than $31 million dollars for the tickets.

One cannot really say much about the safety of the whole flight and how successful this idea will turn out to be until the business is up and running. For now, it would be better for one to think of ways of coming up with the $100,000 for the ticket. Having said that, the pair do deserve credit for coming up with the idea and means for such kind of flights. And if it really does become popular, which in time it certainly will, we shall applaud the two for giving the people the means of doing something that was once a dream.