Will Whitehorn has worked at Virgin for 22 years. Before he ran Galactic, which he named, he did search and rescue for Sir Richard Branson's world-record-attempt balloon flights, and flew helis for British Airways. I got him on the phone for a few minutes to talk about space travel.

How'd Virgin get into the business of civilian space flight?
Sir Richard has always been into space. In the '80s, he was in touch with Gorbechev about getting into the Soyuz. And his first movie produced was The Space Movie [commissioned by NASA to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Apollo mission].

But Virgin Galactic's origins began with a conversation between me, Buzz Aldrin and Sir Richard Branson in the winter of 1996. We asked him why the American space program never launched crafts from air. Buzz explained that the US had the X-15 project in the '60s and they did test launches from a balloon before, and that the US did these experiments when Buzz was a pilot for the Navy in the '50s.

In 1999 we decided to register the name Virgin Galactic, not knowing where we'd find a spacecraft.

In 2003, Steve Fossett and Virgin cofunded the Virgin Atlantic Global Flyer, a plane Fossett would [use to] circumnavigate [the earth] on a single tank of fuel, setting a record. I was watching Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites build the flyer, and noticed he had a small spacecraft in the corner of his factory—it being the ship [SpaceShipOne] that Paul Allen was funding for the [Ansari] X Prize.

That's how we found our ship builder.

How are your customers going to be prepped for space?
There's a three-day training program in our New Mexico facility where, among other things, they'll get G-force training. We've tested 100 of them already using a centrifuge, so they'll understand the forces. If you look at the WhiteKnightTwo [launch vehicle], the starboard hull has an identical cabin to the space ship [see below], and the WhiteKnight has the unique ability to be an astronaut training vehicle, creating forces up to 7Gs. And it can be used as a zero-G flying plane, so passengers can experience G forces and zero G. When White Knight is bringing SpaceShipTwo and its load of passengers into orbit, it is also training the next day's travelers in its hull.

What's the in-flight entertainment going to be like?
The in flight entertainment system won't be like a normal entertainment system. Every customer will have a record of their flight. And lots of data: They'll see how many G's they sustained on the way up, they'll see what time they've arrived, etc. Of course, the best in flight entertainment of all will be the view of the Planet Earth; you'll be able to see the blue planet and the blackness of space while you're weightless.

When's the price coming down to $10,000?
Once the program gets regularized, and we get enough volume, we will be able to reduce the costs. But we believe after 3 to 5 years, we can get it down to $100,000 from $200,000. We can get it down to $100,000 but don't think we'll get it down to $10,000. UPDATE: Sir Richard Branson believes that in his lifetime, the price will be affordable for the average middle class family.

Gravity doesn't go on sale.
Gravity doesn't give you a discount.

Have you already started engineering the zero-g airsickness bags?
NASA already makes one. They're easy to get. But of our 100 customers that we put through the centrifuge, none felt ill from the test.

What other plans do you have for Virgin Galactic?
It's also an industrial and scientific system. We'll bring scientists into space to do microgravity experiments. And we can launch small unmanned rockets or satellites into space, up to 200 kilos, much more cheaply and safely than ever before.

Why should we send people into space?
Stephen Hawking believes that too many scientists in the '80s and '90s got into the mindset that we could just send robots into space. But he said it's wrong to think that way, because humans need to explore. And we now know enough about our planet that we know that a catastrophic event will happen in the next few thousand years—volcanic or otherwise—which would have the propensity to wipe us out. We have to have the ability to leave the planet, and we're only going to be able to do this if we develop manned space flight.

Get Me Off This Rock: Gizmodo's week long dedication to the idea of human life in space.

This video is from an April 20 test flight over the Mojave desert. According to Wired, the plane suffered a tail strike and some rudder control issues, but other than that, it was smooth sailing. Unsurprisingly, the pilots didn't really push the plane as far as spacefaring activity goes, but that will come on another day.

For now, we can continue to talk about how Branson is a) brilliant b) God c) badass d) the real life Dos Equis Guy. Because I'm pretty convinced he designed and built WhiteKnightTwo on his own. Possibly using only his mouth. [Wired]

Just short of two years ago, Simonyi spent two weeks aboard the ISS as the fifth private visitor to the station on a ticket booked with Space Adventures. And now he's heading back on the Soyuz flight that left Kazakhstan this morning; he'll help scientists with experiments and answer question from Earth via the web until returning on April 7.

Having created Microsoft Word and Excel back in the early, early days and now having been to space twice, I think we can officially bestow a crown of ultimate geek cred on Simonyi's glowing head. Godspeed. [NYTimes, Charlesinspace.com]

Anyways, Virgin Galactic apparently linked up with five nordic travel agencies to start booking these packages, which will take off from the Swedish town of Kiruna (also home to an ESA Space Station) in 2012, when they expect the first European space tourism to begin. And even sweeter, prices are supposed to go gradually drop over time. 300 tickets have been sold so far for the trip 110 kilometers above the Earth's surface, and the Ice Hotel plans to book trips where passengers can travel through Aurora Borealis. Whoa. [The Local via Slashdot]

Russian Space Agency chief Anatoly Perminov told reporters that ex-Microsoft man Charles Simonyi will be the last private space passenger. He'll be blasting off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in March.

He said they were canceling the lucrative tourism program in order to expand the space station crew to six. That way Canadian, European and Japanese astronauts can finally live aboard the project their countries helped create. Scientific research will also be boosted from an average of 10 hours a week to 35.

Luckily, even if the Russians won't do it anymore, private enterprises are ramping up to make sure rich people will always get to live out their childhood dreams. Anyone care for a spin on Virgin Galactic? [MSNBC via Slashdot]

The flight lasted just under an hour, and apparently all went according to plan. You can see some brief in-flight videos at Flightglobal.

I'm digging the design, resembling the two P-51s bolted together for the F-82 Twin Mustang—the last piston-engined fighter ever ordered into producation by the USAF. [Space Fellowship via Slashdot, Photo: Alan Radecki]

The design has been set since September 2007, but now that an environmental impact assessment has been passed, construction can now begin. Branson is banking on the rich still paying for a suborbital flight in our current economic clime, and yeah, I probably believe him.

Virgin Galactic and its SpaceShipTwo/White Knight launch system will be the main attraction, but the spaceport's license for vertical and horizontal takeoffs can be used by any number of clients willing to lease some launchpad time. [Ars Technica]

The flying fishbowl will launch from Spaceport America, near Las Cruces, with tickets running an estimated $100,000. Scuba gear will probably cost extra.

And a related FYI: Rocket Racing, which is also funding the bubble ship, is developing a NASCAR-inspired rocket racing league. This can't lose! [New Scientist]

The last time he went (in 2007), Simonyi paid roughly $20 million to participate in a lower back muscle study, map the station's radiation environment and test HD camera components. This time around, he'll have to pay $30 million thanks to inflation and increased costs. [MSNBC]

All this is nothing compared with the TsF-18 centrifuge. Weighing 300 tons and measuring 59 feet long, it looks like a giant blue phallus. It spins at 170 miles per hour, and riders are instructed not to open their mouth while in motion because the pressure will break their jaw, according to Driga. "It is like nightmare," she adds. "Imagine being buried deep in sand and wanting to move but cannot."

"Our company's goal has always been to build rocket-powered vehicles that can be flown and operated like regular aircraft," says Xcor Aerospace president Jeffrey Greason, who claims that Lynx is relatively environmentally friendly: "They are fully reusable, burn cleanly, and release fewer particulates than solid fuel or hybrid rocket motors," he claims.

Unlike the space shuttle, which shuts off its engine and glides into land, the Lynx will have the ability to fire up its engines and re-attempt landing in the event of a borked descent. Fifty test flights have been scheduled, starting in 2010, and, once fully operational, the spacecraft is expected to make several flights per day.

The company will not be selling tickets directly but, rather, will be licensing flight sales to space-adventure tourism companies. There are already plans afoot for the Lynx Mark 2, which will allow space-heads to be in orbit for longer. Funding for the project comes from the Air Vehicles Directorate of the US Air Force Research Laboratory, as well as additional sources—as yet, un-named. [New Scientist]

Space Adventures already claims to have sent tourists into space, renting out rides on a MiG-25 where passengers hold tight to air sickness bags while seeing the curvature of the Earth at 80,000 feet.

As for the upcoming space flights from Singapore, tickets are not available yet. Don't hold your breath.

Space Adventures Announces $115 Million Spaceport in Singapore [Born Rich]