Virgin Galactic is ready for take off

In the Christmas edition of The Economist, check out an article about the incipient private space tourism industry. "One small step for space tourism..." is in the edition dated December 16th 2004. A little bit of overmatter on this article is that one of the plans for tourists paying for $200,000 flights is to actually mould each reclining seat to the individual passenger. (The seats will have to be recliners to reduce the effects of the G-forces of the spaceship.) Passengers will be given this seat as a souvenir to take home with them.