With the space tourism industry gearing up for flight within the next two years, accredited space travel agents are also getting ready to pitch the wonderment to potential space tourists. According to press.co.nz, Virgin Galactic employee Carolyn Wincer is just such a space travel agent.
Wincer is selling tickets at $200,000 a pop aboard the Virgin Galactic / Scaled Composites SpaceShipTwo, which is a far cry below the $20 million ride currently offered by Space Adventures to the International Space Station.
SpaceShipTwo is a collaboration between Virgin Galactic’s rogue CEO Sir Richard Branson and maverick builder and CEO of Scaled Composites, Burt Rutan. The building of SpaceShipTwo piggybacks off the success of SpaceShipOne winning the Anasari X-Prize in 2004 for suborbital space flight.
As part of Carolyn Wincer’s training as a space travel agent, she has experienced zero gravity, which will help her better sell the low orbit earth experience to clients. Flights will take off from the Scaled Composites Mojave Desert Compound in California, stay aloft for 2 ½ hours, then land at the Spaceport America airfield in New Mexico.
Wincer says it is easier to sell high-end customers on the idea of a vacation on a private island or upon a game reserve since the idea of space travel is still quite a bit out there and scary to many. But, as the field matures and people start to go up and come down safely, space travel agents will start to routinely ask, “Would you like to travel to Europe, the Caribbean or Low Earth Orbit this year?”
