If you were worried about the rise in post-pandemic airfares, here’s something that will help put it in perspective: Virgin Galactic just boosted the price of a rocket ride to the edge of space from $200-$250,000 to a sky-high $450,000.
If that’s a bit rich for your budget, you can still hitch a ride on one of Richard Branson’s other enterprises, Virgin Atlantic Airlines or Virgin Voyages. The space ride, though is much shorter; a few minutes in a rocket plane, weightlessness included, after a launch from a carrier plane.
Virgin is offering single seats, or multiples or a chance to ‘buy out the flight.’ Originally described as a six-seater, the recent ‘fully-crewed’ flight had only four aboard, including Branson himself. It’s been pointed out that the carbon load for the short flight for half a dozen people is about the same as for a transAtlantic flight with several hundred aboard.
The next flight, scheduled for later this year, has two seats committed as prizes in a drawing that you can still enter. That may be your best shot at flying anytime soon, because although Virgin says it expects to run up to 400 flights a year, there are already 600 people ahead of you who booked at the $200,000 price.
