December 12, 2005
LONDON: We have lift-off. The British entrepreneur and owner of Virgin, Richard Branson, has chosen the launch site for a venture into space tourism. Rich travellers who pay $US200,000 ($265,000) for a ticket will be whisked 96km into the sky on the three-hour flights. Up to six passengers at a time will have 20 minutes in space, five minutes of it in a weightless state.
This week, representatives from the New Mexico state Government will visit Sir Richard in London before the Virgin boss flies to the US to announce the deal. The state is to invest $266million in the world's first commercial space port and Sir Richard has agreed to take a 20-year lease on the site.
Sources close to Sir Richard said that talks for a space flight licence from the Federal Aviation Administration were "going well". The stable, sunny weather around Roswell should guarantee a maximum of 320 operational days each year. At first, the craft will fly once a week -- but the goal is to fly once a day, enabling a dramatic cut in the ticket price.
The area of the space port occupies a special place for intergalactic enthusiasts.
The so-called "Roswell incident" of 1947 -- supposedly a crash landing of a flying saucer that was covered up by the US government -- has fascinated UFO researchers for almost 60 years. Today, the myth brings 500,000 tourists a year to the area.
Several US states had vied to lure Sir Richard since SpaceShipOne, a vehicle partly backed by the Virgin boss, became the first privately funded craft to make a flight into space in October last year. New Mexico won the bidding by promising to invest the $266million and to give Virgin Galactic a tax break on the sales of its tickets.
There has been no shortage of takers wishing to be among Sir Richard's first space travellers. Virgin Galactic has taken $14.7million in deposits and has 38,700 people registered to fly.
Celebrities who have signed up include William Shatner, the actor who played Captain Kirk in Star Trek, and Sigourney Weaver, who starred as Ripley in the Alien films.
The New Mexico Government has agreed to install all the basic infrastructure at the new space port, including a new runway long enough to handle the Virgin space flights.
The Roswell area will welcome the return of revolutionary aircraft after eking out UFO fictions for the past five decades to attract visitors.
It was home to the only atomic bomber squadron in the world when it was hit by a violent thunderstorm in July 1947. The next morning, a rancher stumbled across wreckage and strange shiny material that he could not bend or tear. The local newspaper published a report claiming the airfield had captured a "flying saucer".
There was, indeed, a cover-up, even if the reality did not match the myth of an alien landing. The military authorities at first claimed that the wreckage was part of a weather balloon. Much later, it was revealed that the debris had belonged to a high-altitude balloon being used to monitor Soviet nuclear tests.
The Sunday Times
The Virgin Galactic spacecraft is scheduled to take off in five years from a site near Roswell, New Mexico, in a desert known for UFO legends and alleged alien autopsies.