Sadly, it won’t be for just anyone in lottery style, but rather the airlines most frequent flier. The lucky individual will be given a 2-hour ride into suborbital space.
Sound too crazy to be true? Incredibly, a trip to space for non-astronauts has been something that Virgin Group Chairman, Richard Branson has been tinkering with for years. Branson’s space tourism company, Virgin Galactic, have been planning flights into space since 2005. So far 520 people have taken the trip (including Ashton Kutcher) for a cool $200,000.
Virgin Free Flight to Space
According to Branson, the next step for Virgin Galactic is offering sub-orbital space flights to regular folk come 2013. And the best way to market such an offer is to offer a free flight to Virgin Atlantic’s most frequent flier.
From August 7th 2012 to August 7th 2013 anyone is allowed to rack up as many frequent flier miles as possible to become eligible for the free Virgin Galactic flight. This way, someone doesn’t have the advantage of 10 years of frequent flier miles.
For everyone else there will be the $200,000 option. So far there have been 900 reservations made for suborbital trips with people putting down $20,000 deposits. Many people predict that space tourism will be a huge industry in the future, a multi-billion dollar industry.
Branson told CNN:
“The initial flights will be sub-orbital, which will give people a taste of space. From there we’ll go into orbital flights and maybe one day hotels in space.”
