Virgin on track to begin passenger space flights

Designer Philippe Starck, former soap star Victoria Principal and Superman Returns director Bryan Singer have booked their flights for tourist trips in outer space, the company selling the galactic voyages said today.

Virgin Galactic, a Virgin Group company, has sold some 200 tickets to passengers for suborbital flights, starting in 2008, said Will Whitehorn, the company’s president.

It has collected £8.5m in deposits for the flights, which cost £109,000 each.

“Right now we’re headed right on schedule,” Whitehorn said. “Things are looking good from our perspective.”

The venture by Virgin Group, owned by British billionaire Sir Richard Branson, is building five spaceships and two aeroplanes by 2010.

Travellers will take seats in a spaceship attached to a separate aeroplane.

Following take-off, the spaceship detaches itself from the plane at about 49,000ft from the ground.

It then enters suborbital space for about 15 minutes – including five minutes of weightlessness.

After its journey into space – at 87 miles above Earth, it returns to the ground.

The total flight-time is about two hours and 15 minutes.

The voyages will launch initially from the Mojave Desert near Los Angeles, before relocating to a permanent base in New Mexico in 2010.

Virgin Galactic is one of many companies venturing into space travel.

Space Adventures, a company based in Vienna, Virginia, has already sent three people on a Russian Soyez rocket to the International Space Station, some 220 miles from Earth. Each trip costs £10.9m.