Virgin Blue goes where Frequent Flyers have not gone before

William Atkins
Wednesday, 04 February 2009 22:31

Science - Space

Paul Allen and Burt Rutan founded Mojave Aerospace Ventures (MAV) as the company responsible for handling the commercial aspects of their private spaceship business.

MAV was awarded the contract with Virgin Galactic to develop the suborbital Virgin SpaceShip, which will send private (but wealthy) citizens into space as part of their space tourism business.

The Spaceship Company, comprised of the Virgin Group and Scaled Composites, is manufacturing five SpaceShips for the trips into space.

The first two of these spacecraft are named Virgin Space Ship (VSS) Enterprise and VSS Voyager. The remaining three have yet to be named.

Branson offered William Shatner, the actor who played Captain Kirk in the original Star Trek TV series and several feature movies, a free ride onboard the first trip of his space fleet (specifically onboard the VSS Enterprise). However, Shatner stated, "I do want to go up but I need guarantees I'll definitely come back.” [MailOnline.co.uk: “Captain Kirk reveals he won't go boldly into space”]

Other celebrities, besides Shatner, that have indicated their desire to go into space onboard the Virgin Galactic suborbital spaceships include designer Philippe Starck, former Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist Dave Navarro, movie star Sigourney Weaver, movie director Bryan Singer, musician Moby, personality Paris Hilton, and astrophysicist Stephen Hawking. [Wikipedia: “Virgin Galactic”]

However, you don’t have to be a famous celebrity to go into space. You only have to win this contest and receive 25,000,000 frequent flyer miles.

So, go boldly where no private person has gone before, but do it quickly because it looks like the 25% bonus Velocity Points offer expires on April 15, 2009, and the Virgin Blue contest-into-space offer expires on June 30, 2009 (terms and conditions).