Airline mogul and adventurer Richard Branson announced plans Monday to boldly go where no private transport company has gone before -- into space.
Branson's travel, entertainment and communications operator Virgin Group said it would offer commercial space flights by 2007, with Branson himself joining the inaugural journey.
The bid is a natural first for Branson, a high-school dropout turned flamboyant tycoon who has made several failed attempts to circle the world by hot-air balloon.
"It's just the kind of thing he absolutely loves, because it gets him maximum publicity," said David Learmount, operations and safety editor of Flight International magazine. "But the technology is there, it's plausible."
Branson, 54, announced a deal to license technology from Mojave Aerospace Ventures, the firm owned by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen that bankrolled June's historic 90-minute space flight by the aircraft SpaceShipOne.
The Virgin craft will be based on Burt Rutan's design for SpaceShipOne, a stubby rocket-plane capable of carrying a pilot and two passengers.
"Virgin has been in talks with Paul Allen and Burt throughout this year and in the early hours of Saturday signed a historical deal to license SpaceShipOne's technology to build the world's first private spaceship to go into commercial operating service," Branson told a news conference in London.
Virgin also announced it was sponsoring SpaceShipOne's bid for the US$10 million Ansari X Prize, which will go to the first organization to successfully launch a privately financed, reusable craft that makes a manned suborbital flight twice within two weeks. SpaceShipOne plans to make its first qualifying flight in early October.
SpaceShipOne cracked the barrier to manned commercial space flight in June by taking a 90-minute flight almost 100km above Earth, just over the distance scientists widely consider to be the boundary of space.
Virgin said its agreement with Mojave Aerospace could be worth up to ?14 million (US$25 million), over the next 15 years, depending on the number of spaceships it builds. The company said it planned to begin construction of the first vessel, VSS Enterprise, next year, and to offer flights by 2007.
Virgin said it would invest about ?60 million (US$108 million) in spaceships and ground infrastructure for the new service, Virgin Galactic, flying 3,000 new astronauts in the first five years. Fares will start at ?115,000 (US$208,000) for a two to three-hour suborbital flight, including three days' training.
"I hope with the launch of Virgin Galactic and the building of our fleet of spacecraft that one day children around the world will wonder why we ever thought that space travel was a dream we read about in books," Branson said.
The only space tourists to date are US businessman Dennis Tito and South African millionaire Mark Shuttleworth, who each paid US$20 million for journeys to the International Space Station on a Russian rocket.
The firm that arranged those trips, Space Adventures, also hopes to begin ticketed suborbital flights within a few years.
Branson, who began his career as a teenage newspaper publisher and record peddler, is now worth US$2.2 billion, according to a Forbes magazine estimate.
His Virgin Group began as a record label, and now sells everything from soft drinks to bridal gowns, and even runs a train service and mobile phone network.
It operates several airlines -- British-based Virgin Atlantic and budget carriers Virgin Express in Europe and Virgin Blue in Australia -- and plans to launch a low-budget US carrier next year.
This week, Virgin also launched an online music service to compete with Apple Computer's iTunes and Microsoft's MSN Music service.
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