Space jam: UAE's 2014 holiday outta this world

A number of UAE residents will join the new breed of astronauts when Virgin Galactic commences commercial spaceflight  - the first expected in 2014.

“[Virgin] Galactic has several customers based in the UAE,” a company spokesperson told Emirates 24|7.

“All training will take place at the Spaceport three days prior to their flight.”

As of now, 600 people from over 50 countries have placed reservations. Celebs including Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt and Ashton Kutcher are among those said to have bought $200,000 tickets.

Abu Dhabi's Aabar Investments holds a stake in Virgin Galactic, which was founded by billionaire Sir Richard Branson of the Virgin Group.

Asked if there were plans to increase or decrease the cost of the ride, the spokesperson said: “Following the start of powered flight, it’s likely that we will soon see a rise in the price of Virgin Galactic space tickets, purely to adjust for inflation over the eight years or so that we have been making reservations available.

“Longer term, our priority is still to reduce the price, and we do not anticipate going over the original $200,000 roughly per ticket in real terms.”

According to Virgin Galactic, the Spaceship test programme, first test flight to space, and start date for commercial service will be dictated by safety.

“It will also be a function of the successful completion of the test flight program and the award of a commercial license by the Federal Aviation dministration (FAA).

"Our recent first (and flawless) supersonic, rocket powered flight of SpaceShipTwo was a huge step forwards, proving all the key components of the system, fully integrated and in flight.

"It was the first time a vehicle built for commercial service had broken the sound barrier since Concorde - and indeed only the second such vehicle ever to do so.”The FAA is the national aviation authority that regulates and oversees all aspects of civil aviation in the country.

Besides, the company states that the path is now clear to a fairly small number of similar flights, which will see a rapid expansion of rocket burn time, culminating in full space flight which it expects to achieve during 2013.

“We will need to undertake a number of test space flights, fit and flight test the interior and of course move the vehicles and the spaceline operation down to Spaceport America, New Mexico. Our best estimate at the moment, if test flights continue as expected, is that we could see the first paying customer flights in 2014. However, safety will always be our North Star,” the spokesperson added.

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