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Virgin Galactic is on course to become the world’s first commercial spaceline, Stephen Attenborough, the company’s Commercial Director, told the audience at the fourth Science Week lecture at Dublin’s Science Gallery.

“Going into space is notoriously risky and notoriously expensive,” says Attenborough, “but, for us, it comes down to an ethos or philosophy. That’s why we’re in this for the long-term.”

That ethos means breaking down the barriers that deprive ordinary people of extraordinary experiences like space flight, says Attenborough.  

“We’re on track. It’s very high-risk and very expensive, but we’re confident that we’re on track,” says Attenborough, who cautiously predicts commercially available flights within about four years.  

It won’t come cheap. Tickets to about one hundred pre-investors were sold for $200,000. That’s a necessary cost, says Attenborough, as it enables Virgin Galactic –the brainchild of Richard Branson– to invest in their ambition of making spaceflight available to the general public.    

All going well, flights could begin taking off with their first paying space tourists as early as 2012 –and Irishman Bill Cullen, who claims to be Virgin Galactic’s first paying customer, will be there.

“My wife always thought I was on another planet,” Cullen explained. “It brings you closer to the spirits that have left the world before us and that’s why I’m going up.”

Ever since Dennis Tito visited the International Space Station in May 2001, mass space tourism has been edging closer to reality. The Russians are the pioneers here –but they’ve only offered multi-million dollar flights for extended visits in space.

Virgin Galactic intends to change that model by offering shorter journeys, sub orbital flights, and, of course, cheaper tickets. Their spaceflight will include about five minutes of complete weightlessness, exposure to the silence of space, and “extraordinary” views of earth –not extended periods in orbit around the planet.  

So how many flights a day can we expect? An answer to that question and some video of Virgin Galactic’s X-Prize winning flight, after the turn.

Attenborough envisages a pool of five spaceships ferrying tourists into space up to four times a day. This poses the engineering challenge of designing and building a spaceship that can operate on a daily basis for five to ten years. Attenborough believes that SpaceShipTwo –which begins a test-flight program in the next few weeks– could be that spaceship.

SpaceShipTwo is designed to carry six passengers and two pilots into space, with enough headroom to allow for free floating. It’s about twice as large as SpaceShipOne and uses an innovative feathered rentry system for each return journey through the earth’s atmosphere.

On October 4, 2004, the SpaceShipOne, designed by Burt Rutan, won the $10,000,000 X Prize , which was awarded to the first private company who could surpass the Kármán Line (62 miles above the surface of the earth and the official boundary of space) twice within two weeks. Watch the flight here:

(If only a certain airline would get into this market, we could hop into space for the price of a cuppa. We’d probably have to pay extra for oxygen though.) 

Attenborough’s entire lecture will be online next week: check back and find out about the training program that space tourists have to undergo, hear about Virgin Galactic’s plans for space hotels and space cargo, and discover why Virgin Galactic expects NASA to be one of their most important customers.