Captain Kirk wants to go to space

Shatner Wants In on Space Tourism
Friday,
October 22, 2004
 
"Star Trek" star William Shatner and Red Hot Chili
Peppers guitarist
Dave Navarro are among thousands of people who want to fly
on Virgin's
proposed commercial space flights, company chief Richard Branson
said
Friday.

 

Branson said more than 7,000 people had registered
their willingness to pay the
$210,000 fare for the service, which promises
to send passengers 70 miles above
the Earth.

 

Speaking from California's Mojave desert, Branson
told Britain's Press
Association news agency there had been "tremendous
take-up" of the idea since he
announced it last month.

 

"We are extremely pleased because it just means in
a sense that the gamble we
took seems to have paid off," he
said.

 

Branson, 54, said he had committed $110 million
toward spaceships and ground
infrastructure for the new service, Virgin
Galactic. He also plans to spend up
to $26 million to license the technology
of SpaceShipOne, the rocket-plane that
made two successful suborbital space
flights earlier this month to capture the
US$10 million Ansari X
Prize.

 

Virgin hoped to offer flights — lasting about 3 1/2
hours including six minutes
of weightlessness — by 2008.

 

Branson said he would go on the first flight, along with family members

including his father, now 86.

 

"My dad has put his hand up and will be 90 at the time, my kids definitely
want
to come and if there is room for my mum she will come as well," Branson
told PA.

 

But he said his wife Joan "will have her feet firmly on the ground, I
suspect,
trying to encourage the kids to stay on the ground."

 

Branson is one of Britain's best known and most colorful entrepreneurs. His

Virgin Group (search) began as a record label, and now sells everything from

soft drinks to bridal gowns, and even runs a train service and mobile phone

network.