From SPACE.COM today:

A go-ahead was given last week by the U.S. Department of State’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC) that clears the way for exchanges of technical information between Scaled Composites of Mojave, California and Virgin Galactic of the United Kingdom to build passenger-carrying suborbital spaceliners.

The “going rate” for seats onboard Virgin Galactic suborbital spaceships are price tagged at $200,000 each.

“We have a significant level of deposits now…nearly $10 million worth,” Whitehorn said. Some people are paying the full price to be founders and some are putting down deposits to fly in the future, he said.

“We’ll be in the position by the time we actually launch this business…I’m sure we would have sold out at least the first couple of years by the time we start flying,” Whitehorn speculated.

A full-scale mock-up of SpaceShipTwo is to be unveiled in the near future, but not this year, Whitehorn said: “We’ll be keeping our light under a bushel [basket] for competitive reasons for some time.”

Posted by Michael at August 17, 2005 07:02 AM