TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES.- Virgin Galactic will take their first space tourists on a long-delayed rocket ride, including a former British Olympian who bought his ticket 18 years ago and a mother-daughter duo from the Caribbean.
The flight window opens on Thursday morning at Spaceport America, in the New Mexico desert, for a trip to the edge of space. If all goes well, Richard Branson’s company will begin offering customers monthly rides on his winged space plane, joining Blue Origin by Jeff Bezos and SpaceX by Elon Musk in the business of space tourism.
The passenger of Virgin Galactic Jon Goodwin, who was among the first to buy a ticket in 2005, said he had faith that one day he would make the trip. The 80-year-old former athlete – who competed in canoeing at the 1972 Olympics – has Parkinson’s disease and wants to inspire others.
“I hope it shows you that these obstacles can be the beginning and not the end of new adventures,” he said in a statement.
Tickets were priced at $200,000 when Goodwin signed up. Now they cost $450,000.
He will be joined by raffle winner Keisha Schahaff, 46, a fitness coach from Antigua, and her daughter, Anastatia Mayers, 18, a student at the Scottish University of Aberdeen. On board the aircraft-launched craft, which glides to a landing similar to that of the space shuttle, are also two pilots and the company’s astronaut trainer.
It will be the seventh trip to space Virgin Galactic since 2018, the first with a passenger. Branson, the company’s founder, came aboard for the first fully crewed voyage in 2021. Italian military and government investigators took to the air in June on the first commercial flight. About 800 people are currently on Virgin Galactic’s waiting list, according to the company.
FOUNTAIN: With information from AP
