Space man

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The man in charge of Virgin Galactic's mission to send tourists to space, Will Whitehorn, speaks exclusively about the company's daring plans.

In 1969, the year man first landed on the moon, Will Whitehorn's mother told him that one day he'd go to space.

At the time anything seemed possible and the wide-eyed nine-year-old boy was convinced that he'd be following in the footsteps of his hero Neil Armstrong.

Today, 39 years later, he is planning to do exactly that.

"A lot of my generation were told that one day they'd go to space," he says. "But of course it never happened because the Space Programme just ran out of control with cost and safety issues. The chance that this might now happen is something I'm very excited about."

Virgin Galactic is probably the most ambitious venture ever launched by a single company - but if successful it could also be the most lucrative.

The concept of space tourism has for so long been the stuff of sci-fi movies that it almost seems fantastical.

But Virgin takes this project very seriously. Whitehorn says that so far around US$100million has been invested in Virgin Galactic and that it originally aimed for US$240million to be invested in the project in total.

The design for its two spacecraft SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo are being finalised at a base in Mojave, California and already 254 tickets have been sold to members of the public willing to pay US$200,000 for their chance to travel to space.

"We've actually got 85,000 registrations and we've sold 254 tickets," says Whitehorn. "There is another US$36million on deposit from people who've reserved tickets. Our overall plan is that by the time we start flying commercial customers we have to have sold about the first year's worth of tickets."

Among those who have reserved their seat on the plane is of course Virgin founder Richard Branson who will be among the first passengers on the commercial flight alongside the designer of the Virgin Galactic spacecraft Burt Rutan.

But while Will is closer than ever to his dreams of space travel he knows there is much work to do on the project before it reaches lift-off.

So much so that Virgin is unable to give a deadline for the completion of the project - and anticipates that around 12 to 18 months of test flights will take place once the final designs for the spacecraft have been unveiled.

"This project is based on milestones of achieving various things, not based around a final start date, because no one has ever done a commercial certification of a human carrying spaceship with the Federal Aviation Authority before.

"We've got a very long and extensive safety orientated programme to complete. There will be up to 150 test flights. We are as confident as we can possibly be about the project."

And confidence is something Will needs by the bucket load. After all he is in charge of a project in which million of dollars has already been invested - but that is still years away from completion or even getting the green light to launch.

In order for the project to succeed Whitehorn and his team have to rely on the blind faith of customers and their willingness to buy into a dream - rather than (for now at least) a reality.

He describes this as one of the biggest challenges he has faced as head of the project: "I would say the biggest challenge of all was whether people would buy tickets.

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