Holidays in space

Virgin today announced the first passenger flights into space. Sir Richard Branson's company hopes to offer trips in the Virgin Galactic spacecraft within 18 months.

Each two-hour flight will cost £110,000, take passengers 62 miles above the earth's surface and include up to 10 minutes of weightlessness.

Virgin says it has signed a £14million deal with the makers of American SpaceShipOne, which this year became the first private spacecraft. Virgin Galactic, a company set up to run the space tourism business, will begin building two craft based on the SpaceShipOne design next year.

A spokesman for Virgin claimed the first of these, named VSS Enterprise, could make its first flights within 18 months.

"This technology has been proven already, and we expect to invest around £100million to build the first two spaceships. We will be scaling up the design of SpaceShipOne to allow more passengers to fly than the three in the current design," he said.

"Richard will definitely be on board the first flight - it is something he is very passionate about."

Virgin claimed its pricing for the flights was affordable.

"We believe we will be able to take about 3,000 people into orbit in the first year. Obviously prices will come down over time, but at that price research has shown there is a huge market," said the spokesman.

Sir Richard said: "We've always had a dream of developing space tourism. We hope to create thousands of astronauts over the next few years. It

will also allow every country to have their own astronauts rather than the privileged few."

Passengers on the flights will launch from the Mojave Spaceport in the Californian desert and be carried under a larger plane to 50,000 feet. There the spaceship will be released and rocket motors will power it to about 62 miles above the earth.

Passengers will see the curvature of the earth and, because the craft will have a pressurised cabin, they will not need a spacesuit or their own oxygen supply. To return to earth the rocket fins are rotated, turning them into wings to allow the craft to glide back to the airport.

Virgin said: "Once we have a licence to export these spaceships from the US, we are looking at launches from Britain and Australia."

SpaceShipOne, which was funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, will this week bid to win the $10million Ansari X Prize, offered to the first company to complete two space flights within two weeks. Virgin is sponsoring the attempt.

Branson is also working with Burt Rutan, SpaceShipOne's designer, on a plane to attempt the first nonrefuelled flight around the world.