Richard Branson Plans Orbital Spaceships For Virgin Galactic

Velcroman1 writes "Following the historic first rocket-powered flight of its SpaceShipTwo vehicle, Virgin Galactic plans to build a fleet of spaceships and begin ferrying hundreds of tourists into space in 2014. And then? A whole new kind of spacecraft, Sir Richard Branson said. 'We'll be building orbital spaceships after that,' Branson told Fox News Tuesday, 'so that people who want to go for a week or two can.' Assuming the cost is on the same scale, would you pay a few hundred grand for a few weeks in orbit?"

Re:$200K ... Uh Oh.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Forget it. Even $200k for a few weeks in space is a pipe dream right now. Even with your mass and your portion the mass of the spacecraft keeping you alive squashed down to say, a ton. that one ton has to be lobbed into low Earth orbit just to get you there. That would mean $200 per kg in launch costs. And if that $200k meant also the food and the service and the launch personnel and other costs, start looking for significantly lower launch cost figures. Who's going to do that for you? SpaceX is aiming for $2k per kg with their heaviest LV which is still only on paper. If they succeed, it will be the cheapest LV in history, by a wide margin, probably for quite some time. Who's going to squash another order of magnitude? And when? Also, one ton per person makes for a really cramped vessel (think Mercury capsule).