At least for the very rich, a certain barrier to space travel has been broken. Those who can afford the $450,000 cost can now book a trip to space with Virgin Galactic (SPCE) just like they would a trip by train or plane.
The space tourism company, founded by billionaire Richard Branson, on Tuesday announced plans to open up its tickets to the general public later this week. Those interested need to put down a $150,000 deposit and then pay the remaining $300,000 before the 90-minute flights, which Virgin Galactic confirmed will begin departing later this year.
"We plan to have our first 1,000 customers on board at the start of commercial service later this year," Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier said in a statement.
Space Tourism Is Moving At Lightning-Speed
This marks a major milestone since Branson last July became the first non-astronaut billionaire to go into space on a rocket he funded — he beat Amazon (AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos by just over a week.
Since then, companies like Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin and SpaceX have held a number of crewed flights for a select number of invited guests but the promised era of tourism has also hit a few snags along the way.
In September, Virgin Galactic put a follow-up flight called Unity 23 on pause after finding manufacturing defects and deciding that more review was needed. The company had also initially said that it would not be resuming commercial space flights until the end of 2022.
But there was still no shortage of rich people wanting to go to space with Virgin Galactic — some people have put down $250,000 for a spot as far back as 15 years ago while new estimates predict that the waiting list now has nearly 8,000 people.
The company did not indicate how long it would take to get everyone who already made a deposit into space.
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Why Virgin Galactic Stock Is Going Crazy
The planned flights will take only about 90 minutes but, during that time, it will take passengers to an altitude of 50 miles and show them the earth at the edge of space from rocket-powered vehicle SpaceShipTwo Unity. The guests will take off from Spaceport America in New Mexico and spend a few days undergoing training for the flight.
Despite the inaccessibility of paying so much for such a short experience, this marks a major milestone in the age of space tourism.
The very fact that the public, rather than a few privately selected guests, can pay to go to space pushed out the price and long wait time factors for the market response. While Virgin Galactic's shares are down over 58% year-over-year due to past setbacks and delays, (SPCE) stock soared by over 28% on Tuesday amid the latest news.
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