[billdan (Bill)]

Joy riding by the rich people maybe true, but there is no mention of that on the Virgin Galactic website.

I've cherry picked some of their mission statements.

Exposure to several minutes of high quality microgravity per flight and responsive flight access, allowing for ‘science of opportunity’ missions and series measurements taken on rapidly repeated flights

We believe this capability will enable scientific experiments as well as educational and research programs to be carried out by a broader range of individuals, organizations and institutions than ever before.

Ability to conduct upper atmosphere observations via window mounted experiments

Dramatically gentler g-loading than sounding rockets

Quick recovery of payloads, with pre-flight and post-flight access within hours of a launch

Virgin pledged to bring ordinary people into space — the price of $200,000 per seat.


Unless I win Lotto I could never afford to go into space. A University professor who wants to do an experiment could easily obtain a research grant and go to the edge of space with no training.

Entrepreneurs have to start somewhere, baby steps. Twenty years from now they may have larger aircraft that could carry heavier payloads and reach further into space.