Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo to be unveiled on Monday (December 7 2009)

Good to see - Virgin Galactic said back in the summer that it would be unveiled in December, and so they're right on time. Though the flights it will be offering are suborbital it's still technically space, and it's especially nice to see production moving along so smoothly as this craft is operating on the same concept under which the Space Shuttle was originally created - the goal at the time was to make something that would be able to go to space and back with relatively little effort and cost. At the moment the closest thing we have to something like that is the Soyuz, which remains just about the cheapest and most reliable craft there is.

As long as the craft is safe and reliable it will be a guaranteed success - $200,000 for a quick trip to space may seem like a lot but the waiting list has already topped a phenomenal 65,000 this summer, so even before the first flight there is at least a total of $13 billion ready to be spent by customers. Hopefully once flights begin people will wake up and realize just how much money there is to be made in this area. Space tourism has thus far remained almost entirely untapped. Or to be precise, 99.999999895% untapped (6,692,030,277 people minus the seven that have made it to space on their own money).