Branson: Virgin space project keeps being delayed

Oct 24, 2012

(AP)—British billionaire Richard Branson says his space tourism project keeps being pushed back and isn't sure of an exact date for the first launch.

He says it will be at least another 12 or 18 months before the Virgin Galactic venture can offer paid space travel to adventurers.

The founder of the met with students on his first visit to Poland on Wednesday, where he came to launch Virgin Academy, which will help young people kick start their own businesses.

Asked about Virgin Galactic, Branson said he has "stopped counting" days to the launch because it gets delayed "to the next year, to the next year."

More than 100 would-be space tourists have signed up for the $200,000 two-hour trips that go 62 miles (100 kilometers) above Earth.

Explore further: Earth-passing asteroid is 'an entirely new beast'

5 /5 (1 vote)

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

add to favorites email to friend print save as pdf

Related Stories

New Mexico to be site of spaceport

Dec 13, 2005

Officials from the London-based Virgin Galactic and New Mexico say they've signed an agreement to build a $200 million spaceport.

Virgin tycoon Branson invests in Square

Nov 08, 2011

Square, a start-up from a co-founder of Twitter, said Tuesday that Virgin tycoon Richard Branson has invested in the mobile payments company.

Recommended for you

Earth-passing asteroid is 'an entirely new beast'

17 hours ago

On the last day of May 2013 asteroid 1998 QE2 passed relatively closely by our planet, coming within 6 million kilometers… about 15 times the distance to the Moon. While there was never any chance of an ...

Details of Yuri Gagarin's tragic death revealed

17 hours ago

On the morning of April 12, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin lifted off aboard Vostok 1 to become the first human in space, spending 108 minutes in orbit before landing via parachute in the Saratov region ...

Russia fetes 50th anniversary of first woman in space

Jun 16, 2013

Russia celebrated Sunday the 50th anniversary of the maiden flight of the first woman in space—a Soviet national hero who went by the call name "Seagull" and captured the imaginations of girls around the ...

Europe's space truck docks with ISS

Jun 15, 2013

A robot freighter bearing 6.6 tonnes of cargo docked with the International Space Station (ISS) on Saturday, the European Space Agency (ESA) said.

User comments : 5

Adjust slider to filter visible comments by rank

Display comments: newest first

Lurker2358
1 / 5 (7) Oct 24, 2012
So what?

There are nowhere near enough people on Earth who have enough income or net worth to pay for the flights so as to ever pay back the cost of his projects, much of which has come from public funding.

Is he secretly involved in a government black project and using this as the cover?

The entire scheme makes no economic sense in any paradigm I can conceive, because the cost of launch is so high he will only make a few dollars profit per launch, but it would take millions of launches to ever pay back the full investment.

If he was attempting to building a mining colony or something useful and productive, I'd be all for it, but the space tourism thing is awful.

100 * $200,000 = $20,000,000 = chump change compared to the investment of the tax payers.

He's basically bilking the state and federal government for billions in what amounts to a ponzi scheme.
eljo
4 / 5 (4) Oct 24, 2012
Given the minor cost of operation and low costs of the fuels and propulsion systems involved, combined with the almost complete reusability of this vehicle configuration, it does make economic sense and that is why he got in the business in the first place.

As with any new capability (which in this case is desired): if the price is right (which it is), private people and governmental bodies alike will come to use and pay for this capability.

Hence, this space tourism thingy is funded on sound economic reasoning. The only problem with the business model is: 'human scepticism'; but that has never scared of the (rich) early adaptors and visionary crowd, which has always existed and has seemingly already bought a ticket. Other thrill seekers with deep pockets (of which there are a lot) who want the vehicle to become a little more proven will not hesitate to buy a ticket once it is.
Neurons_At_Work
3.7 / 5 (3) Oct 24, 2012
@Lurker-- Can you enlighten me on the 'billions' bilked from state and federal governments? Other than the lease arrangements made with New Mexico for their eventual Virgin 'spaceport', I am not aware of any public funds going to Branson. Paul Allen provided the original seed money, and from what I've read private investment is funding the rest.
Lurker2358
1 / 5 (2) Oct 25, 2012
There was a discussion about this a few weeks ago in another article, in which it was shown that he has in fact been paid large sums by the state and federal government.

The sums were some very large amounts as well, though I don't remember exactly, but it was quite literally many billions of dollars, with a B.

It was another Branson/space tourism article recently published here.

I was not the first to bring up the topic.

It's not sound economic reasoning, because there aren't enough people wealthy enough to ever pay for enough tickets for it to be profitable given the amounts of money being poured into the project.

It's insane.
Lurker2358
1 / 5 (2) Oct 25, 2012
The spaceport alone was paid by tax payers from Arizona, and Branson's firm ONLY pays 1 million dollars per year for lease. The cost of the project so far to the tax payers has been over $200 million dollars, for the port alone.

This is just one piece of the puzzle, because it doesn't include all the other contributions to the program. Where is all the R&D money coming from for the technologies? It's coming from government. There aren't any private or corporate investors dumb enough to fall for this, at least I hope not.

Do you realize that just to pay for the port itself would require 1000 passengers at $200,000 per ticket?!

Regardless, the people who have invested, government or not, are going to get burned.

Whenever you run out of professional atheletes, entertainers, and the few truly "wealthy" business people, who else is going to pay $200,000 for a 3 minute experience?

I wouldn't pay that if I had it.

I wouldn't pay that if I won the lottery. It would be immoral.

More news stories

Predators affect the carbon cycle, researchers show

A new study shows that the predator-prey relationship can affect the flow of carbon through an ecosystem. This previously unmeasured influence on the environment may offer a new way of looking at biodiversity management and ...

Final curtain for Europe's deep-space telescope

The deep-space telescope Herschel took its final bow on Monday, climaxing a successful four-year mission to observe the birth of stars and galaxies, the European Space Agency (ESA) said.

New language discovery reveals linguistic insights

A new language has been discovered in a remote Indigenous community in northern Australia that is generated from a unique combination of elements from other languages. Light Warlpiri has been documented by University of Michigan ...