There is no in-flight service, no toilet, and nowhere to put your luggage, but punters have already pledged ?00 million (US$1.46 billion) to bag a seat on Sir Richard Branson's latest commercial venture -- a brief trip to the edge of space.
The 54-year-old entrepreneur announced plans to offer the first commercial trips into space last month. For a mere ?15,000, those bold enough -- and rich enough -- will get a seat next to a handful of other passengers aboard the Virgin Galactic VSS Enterprise, a spaceship Branson hopes to have built and ready for launch by 2008.
Branson has poured ?4 million into the venture and more than 7,000 hopefuls have registered their willingness to pay the fare, amounting to ?05 million, well before the craft is even built.
"We are extremely pleased, because it just means in a sense that the gamble we took seems to have paid off," Branson said.
The ship will begin its three-and-a-half hour round trip into space strapped beneath a turbojet-powered plane. When the plane reaches 15,000m, the spaceship will release itself and fire up rocket engines to propel it straight up at three times the speed of sound.
Within 25 seconds, the craft will have accelerated to more than 3,200kph, the thrust pressing passengers back into their flat "beds."
At an altitude of 112m, beyond the upper reaches of Earth's atmosphere, the fledgling astronauts will be able to unclip their seatbelts and enjoy a six-minute float around the cabin. The view through the portholes will show the curvature of the Earth.
Several celebrities are among the 7,000 who have signed up for tickets. The actor William Shatner, who played Captain Kirk in Star Trek, and the former Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist Dave Navarro have put their names forward and one Hollywood director has booked an entire ship and hopes to be among the first to fly.
The Virgin craft is based on the US-designed SpaceShipOne, which reached a height of 100km in a test flight over the California desert in June. Flights will initially only take off from the Mojave desert in California, but Virgin hopes eventually to open other launch sites in the UK, Florida, Australia and Singapore.
To date, tickets into space have been only for the obscenely rich. Three years ago, the US millionaire Denis Tito paid US$20 million for a trip to the International Space Station aboard a Russian rocket. A year later, South African Mark Shuttleworth followed.
Despite the flood of interest, Branson insists the first flight will be reserved for him and his family.
"My dad put his hand up and will be 90 at the time, my kids definitely want to come and if there is room for my mum she will come as well," he said.
FALLING BEHIND: Samsung shares have declined more than 20 percent this year, as the world’s largest chipmaker struggles in key markets and plays catch-up to rival SK Hynix Samsung Electronics Co is laying off workers in Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand as part of a plan to reduce its global headcount by thousands of jobs, sources familiar with the situation said. The layoffs could affect about 10 percent of its workforces in those markets, although the numbers for each subsidiary might vary, said one of the sources, who asked not to be named because the matter is private. Job cuts are planned for other overseas subsidiaries and could reach 10 percent in certain markets, the source said. The South Korean company has about 147,000 in staff overseas, more than half
TECH PARTNERSHIP: The deal with Arizona-based Amkor would provide TSMC with advanced packing and test capacities, a requirement to serve US customers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is collaborating with Amkor Technology Inc to provide local advanced packaging and test capacities in Arizona to address customer requirements for geographical flexibility in chip manufacturing. As part of the agreement, TSMC, the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, would contract turnkey advanced packaging and test services from Amkor at their planned facility in Peoria, Arizona, a joint statement released yesterday said. TSMC would leverage these services to support its customers, particularly those using TSMC’s advanced wafer fabrication facilities in Phoenix, Arizona, it said. The companies would jointly define the specific packaging technologies, such as TSMC’s Integrated
An Indian factory producing iPhone components resumed work yesterday after a fire that halted production — the third blaze to disrupt Apple Inc’s local supply chain since the start of last year. Local industrial behemoth Tata Group’s plant in Tamil Nadu, which was shut down by the unexplained fire on Saturday, is a key linchpin of Apple’s nascent supply chain in the country. A spokesperson for subsidiary Tata Electronics Pvt yesterday said that the company would restart work in “many areas of the facility today.” “We’ve been working diligently since Saturday to support our team and to identify the cause of the fire,”
Sales RecORD: Hon Hai’s consolidated sales rose by about 20 percent last quarter, while Largan, another Apple supplier, saw quarterly sales increase by 17 percent IPhone assembler Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) on Saturday reported its highest-ever quarterly sales for the third quarter on the back of solid global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團) globally, said it posted NT$1.85 trillion (US$57.93 billion) in consolidated sales in the July-to-September quarter, up 19.46 percent from the previous quarter and up 20.15 percent from a year earlier. The figure beat the previous third-quarter high of NT$1.74 trillion recorded in 2022, company data showed. Due to rising demand for AI, Hon Hai said its cloud and networking division enjoyed strong sales
RSS