Virgin Galactic is selling tickets to space - for $450,000: Talking Tech podcast

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Hey there, listeners. It's Brett Molina, welcome back to Talking Tech. Virgin Galactic will soon sell tickets for space trips to the public. Yes, that means you can go to their website and you can buy or secure a reservation for a trip to space aboard a Virgin Galactic spacecraft. Here's the catch, the reservation costs $450,000. Not a typo. I write about this in a story that you can read on tech.usatoday.com. The aerospace company announced plans to sell these tickets to the general public. Reservations opened up on February 16th, and as I said, they cost $450,000. Potential travelers must pay a $150,000 deposit to hold the spot, and then they pay the rest before they take off. Tickets will be available to a thousand customers for trips later this year. The flights will take off from Spaceport America in New Mexico, and Virgin Galactic says that the trip lasts about 90 minutes or so.

So what do you get to experience for $450,000? In a statement from the company, they say, quote, "The spaceship gracefully flips while astronauts enjoy several minutes of out-of-seat weightlessness and breathtaking views of Earth from the spaceship's 17 windows," end quote. Virgin Galactic, of course, is among several companies, including SpaceX and Blue Origin that are pushing forward these plans to eventually make space travel commercial. So anyone can buy a ticket, a very, very expensive ticket, and they can travel to space.

And of course we've heard a lot of these billionaires testing out all these flights, we've heard these stories. Last July, Virgin Galactic founder, Richard Branson flew aboard the company's space plane called the VSS Unity. Blue Origin, of course, launched a manned flight that same month with Jeff Bezos among several members of the crew. And then in September, SpaceX launched its first flight with an all-civilian crew. Obviously it is going be a while before this becomes mainstream to the point where regular people can get on one of these aircraft and fly to space, because unless you are very, very rich, you're obviously not going to be paying $450,000 to do this. It sounds like a fantastic opportunity, but of course it's a little expensive.

You can read more about this trip and read more about all our coverage related to space and these billionaires as they try to push this quest to make space travel a commercial, regular thing on tech.usatoday.com. Listeners, let's hear from you. Do you have any comments, questions or show ideas? Any tech problems you want us to try to address? You can find me on Twitter, @brettmolina23. Please forget to subscribe and rate us or leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, anywhere you get your podcasts. And don't forget, if you want tech news delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to the Talking Tech newsletter. It's out every Thursday. Go to newsletters.usatoday.com. You've been listening to Talking Tech, we'll be back tomorrow with another quick hit from the world of tech.