Skip to content
Guest Thinkers

Innovation for Rocket Scientists in the New Mexico Desert

Sign up for Big Think on Substack
The most surprising and impactful new stories delivered to your inbox every week, for free.


Two visionaries – billionaire Richard Branson of Virgin Galactic and legendary aircraft designer Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites – are leading the push for commercial space travel by the year 2011. Last week, the duo unveiled SpaceShipTwo — the first-ever commercial spaceship for making sub-orbital space flights for everyday citizens. (Well, not exactly “everyday,” since the cost of a single flight will likely exceed $200,000 but you get the idea).

Flight testing for SpaceShipTwo could start within the next few months and by the end of 2010, Branson and Rutan hope to unveil a new space port in the New Mexico desert. According to WIRED magazine, already 300 potential passengers have plunked down the advance cash for the chance to make the sub-orbital passenger flight.

The projected dates are likely to change — think of all the hoopla around the new Boeing Dreamliner and all the concomitant delays over the past two years — but it’s still exciting to think that the next decade may be the decade of private space travel.

[image: Richard Branson and Burt Rutan with SpaceShipTwo via WIRED]


Sign up for Big Think on Substack
The most surprising and impactful new stories delivered to your inbox every week, for free.

Related

Up Next