Travel News
- Chinese businessman gets ready for space voyage
Date: 27-Nov-2006 Sources: (Xinhua Online)
A businessman from Zhejiang Province plans to become the first Chinese space tourist, blasting off around the end of 2008.
The Ningbo entrepreneur will pay 200,000 U.S. dollars to take the 3.5-hour ride, including 30 minutes in space, the Zhejiang-based Qianjiang Evening News reported yesterday, citing Rupert Hoogewerf, chief executive of the Shanghai-based Hurun Report, which ranks China's wealthy.
Hurun is the China agent for New Mexico-based Virgin Galactic, which will operate the trip.
Hoogewerf didn't reveal the name of the country's first cosmic flyer, saying only that the man is younger than 40, according to the newspaper.
Virgin Galactic, a space tourism company formed by Virgin Group, plans to launch commercial space trips 120 kilometers above the Earth at the end of 2008. The company gave the Chinese mainland a quota of two, one man and one woman, among its first 100 passengers.
Hoogewerf, who has been compiling lists of the mainland's wealthy since 1999, said more than 20 people, most of whom are entrepreneurs running private companies in Zhejiang, had consulted him about the space voyage.
The group included three businesswomen, one from Sichuan Province, one from Beijing and another from Hong Kong.
Negotiations are still under way to decide on the female traveler, Hoogewerf said.
Virgin Galactic plans to send 520 people into space in about 100 launches during its first year.
'Our goal is to end the exclusivity attached to manned space travel, which means designing a privately built vehicle which can fly almost anyone to space safely without the need for special expertise or exhaustive, time-consuming training,' the company said earlier.
Hoogewerf said the Virgin trips will not demand much in the way of physical conditioning. He said 95 percent of all airline passengers should be able to take a space trip.
The travelers selected will be required only to go through two days of preflight preparation. Previous space tourism in Russian space agency-built shuttles required six months of training.
Virgin Galactic will launch its first test flight late next year.
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