7,000 and counting signed up to go to space.

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meteo

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LONDON, England -- William Shatner wants to boldly go where he's only pretended to go so far.<br /><br />The "Star Trek" star is among more than 7,000 people who have told Richard Branson they would gladly pay him $210,000 (£115,000) for a trip aboard his planned spacecraft, the entrepreneur said Friday.<br /><br />Former Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist Dave Navarro has signed up for a ride, and a Hollywood director who was not identified has booked an entire ship.<br /><br />Trevor Beattie, chairman of the ad agency TBWA -- responsible for campaigns such as the "Hello Boys" Wonderbra campaign with Eva Herzigova -- offered to send a check as soon as the project was launched last month.<br /><br />In all, more than $1.45 billion (£800 million) has been pledged -- years before the Virgin Galactic spaceship is even built, Branson said.<br /><br />Branson, 54, is pouring $135 million (£74 million) into his latest commercial experiment, which promises to send the paying public 70 miles above the planet to experience six minutes of weightlessness and see the curvature of the Earth.<br /><br />Speaking from the Mojave Desert in California, Branson told the UK's Press Association he was overwhelmed by the response.<br /><br />"We are extremely pleased because it just means in a sense that the gamble we took seems to have paid off," he said.<br /><br />"Market research suggested that there were that sort of number of people willing to agree to that sort of price.<br /><br />"We have committed £60 million and we have had a tremendous take-up. All indicators are that the risk was worth taking.<br /><br />In addition to that amount, Virgin has spent £14 million buying the licensing rights to Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne, which successfully launched into space twice earlier this month to win the $10 million Ansari X Prize.<br /><br />Five- or nine-seater spacecraft are being designed which will travel at three times the speed of sound. The journey into space will last around three and a half hours.<br />
 
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mrmorris

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<font color="yellow">"...5 per flight, 5 planes, one week turn around that's a 5 year waiting list..."</font><br /><br />I could be wrong, but I thought that was five *people* per flight, i.e. four passengers unless one of them will be doubling as a pilot. <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /><br /><br />If true -- the waiting list just got extended to 6.7 years. Although I would expect a commercial version wouldn't require a 1-week turnaround...
 
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rybanis

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7,000 people? Woah! <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
 
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kelle

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Whew, $210,000 for a 3 and a half hour trip into space. If it included a stay at a space station for a week, perhaps I would have bought a ticket. Or perhaps not... It will get cheaper with time, definately!
 
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thermionic

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The way it's described on the Virgin Galactic website, you get a week-long party in addition for the thrill-ride in return for your $210K. Maybe think of it as a week vacation on a luxuray yaht with a day trip to outer space. I ponder it occasionally. I recall considering signing up for the Air Force when I was in highschool. At that time, you pretty much had to in order to even have a million to 1 chance of getting into space.
 
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arobie

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Less than a month after the announcement of the formation of Virgin Galactic, over seven THOUSAND people have signed up. This is awesome!<br /><br />Lets see....This is about a 160 million investment. So far he's been pledged 1.47 billion from flight payments. That is about 1.31 billion dollar profit. <img src="/images/icons/laugh.gif" /> <br /><br />That doesn't count flight costs though. Anyone have a ball park figure of what the flight costs might be?
 
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radarredux

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> <i><font color="yellow">Off the top of my head I should think it would be something a little in excess of $300,000 per flight.</font>/i><br /><br />That sounds about right. Several months ago I read a number of articles quoting "players" (including Rutan) saying that they could be profitable for about $100,000 per passenger, and the price would eventually go down to $30-50k. That would put the operational cost of a flight somewhere between $100,000 and $500,000.<br /><br />But as you said, until they can get lots of flights in, find out what their insurance rates will be, etc., maintenance costs, turn around times, etc. they (and we) can only estimate. (Actually, they can estimate, we can speculate <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /> )</i>
 
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arobie

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I posted this on the free space version of this topic, and I'm wanted to post it here too.<br /><br />Let's see, 7,000 people, $210,000 a ticket, that is about 1.47 BILLION dollars. That is alot of money! This is awesome. So far Sir Richard Branson has only invested 160 million. So far this is ammounting to a 1.31 BILLION dollar profit. I like the way this is looking. <br /><br />Adding in flight costs, which we can only speculate, lets say about 300,000 per flight, (Thanks newsartist) the profit would still be 890 million dollars. <br /><br />7000 people * $210,000 per person = 1.47 billion dollars. <br /><br />7000 people / 5 passengers per flight = 1400 flights. <br /><br />1400 flights * 300,000 dollars per flight = 420 million dollars <br /><br />1.47 billion dollars - 160 million - 420 million = 890 million dollar profit <br /><br />This looks good to me! <img src="/images/icons/laugh.gif" />
 
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arobie

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Here is yearly calculations:<br /><br />Using the $300,000 figure for flight costs per flight, thats about a $78 million cost per year. <br /><br />Assuming they fly once a week with 5 ships: <br /><br />$300,000 * 52 weeks * 5 ships = 78 million dollars <br /><br />5 passengers * $210,000 = $1,050,000 (total passenger payments per flight) <br /><br />$1.05 million * 52 weeks = $54,600,000 (total passenger payments per year on one ship) <br /><br />$54.6 million * 5 ships = $273,000,000 (total passenger payments per year on five ships) <br /><br />$273 million - $78 = $195 million profit per year
 
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arobie

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If a ship is lost, business would be killed. People would become afraid of flying and would not buy tickets. Why even think about this?
 
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cosmictraveler

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What if the ship comes crashing down to Earth and kills many on the ground? Where's the safety proceedures, who's going to establish them? I think it is a great idea as long as SAFETY is the paramount thing to remember. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p>It does not require many words to speak the truth. Chief Joseph</p> </div>
 
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arobie

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It is the governments job to establish the safety regulations, and that is what is happening. The US govnment is establishing those regulations, and probably over-doing it. I don't think we will have to worry to much about safety. <br /><br />Anyways Rutan is designing the ship, and he has and excellent safety record. I trust him to do a good job.
 
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meteo

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Mohave airport is where they are taking off from correct? It isn't a very populated area. It's small it wouldn't do much damage, it shouldn't explode either. You'd be pretty unlucky to be living in the middle of the desert and spaceshipone lands on you.
 
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crowing

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In one sense I'm not surprised because that is not very much money really to millions of people,but promising and actually putting your money on the table for real are two different things!<br /><br />Mind you branson is an entrepreneur,if there really is a need for more ships then you can be absolutely certain that if there's money to be made,branson will build dozens of them if he has too!
 
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arobie

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Space Ship Two isn't going to orbit. SS2 is going to be a suborbital space craft.
 
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