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Our dreams of commercial space travel are suffused with a sense of wonder: we’re willing to pay hundreds of thousands to visit suborbital space long enough to see the curvature of the Earth and enjoy weightlessness before returning to our origin
But for private space ventures, the ability to take passengers to the edge of space opens up a more conventional, and lucrative, possibility: a 6,800-mile New York-to-Tokyo flight that lasts anywhere from 45 minutes to several hours instead of the 12-14 hours that it takes on today’s long-haul aircraft, according to a 2008 study by students at the International Space University. You wouldn’t even have time to watch Lawrence of Arabia.
New York to Tokyo in 45 Minutes? Space Ventures Look to Suborbital Point-to-Point Travel
Seeded on Mon Feb 13, 2012 2:30 PM EST
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So is the end game for Virgin or XCOR to become space’s first “legacy carriers”? Branson’s company might actually be just repeating what it did for air travel 30 years ago and is laying the foundations to, one day, ferry passengers on high-speed transcontinental space ships. This reality is still decades away but Virgin and its competitors are taking steps to ensure they’ll be that future industry’s dominant player.
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