Commercial space flight comes one step closer

WITH his usual flair, British billionaire Richard Branson rappelled from a balcony, shook up a big bottle of champagne and took a swig while christening the world’s first commercial spaceport.

Branson’s Virgin Galactic will stage its commercial space tourism venture from Spaceport America in a remote patch of desert in southern New Mexico.

Branson was joined by Gov Susana Martinez, astronaut Buzz Aldrin and scores of would-be space travellers at the terminal-hangar for the dedication. It had been nearly a year since Branson was in New Mexico to celebrate the completion of the runway.

“The building is absolutely magnificent,” he said. “It is literally out of this world, and that’s what we were aiming at creating.”

With the spaceport and mothership completed, the company is now finalising its rocket tests.

“We’re ticking the final boxes on the way to space,” Branson said.

He hopes enough test flights of the spacecraft can be done by the end of 2012 to start commercial flights soon after.

More than 450 people have purchased tickets to fly with Virgin Galactic. About 150 of them attended the ceremony.

The crowd was also treated to a flyover by WhiteKnightTwo, which one day will take space tourists on suborbital flights.

The $209m (€152m) taxpayer-financed spaceport will be a launch station for people and payloads on the rocket ships being developed for Virgin Galactic.

Tickets for rides aboard WhiteKnightTwo cost $200,000. The two and a half hour flights will include five minutes of weightlessness and views that, until now, only astronauts have been able to experience.