“When I said to my mum we are going to fly to the space she only asked a question ‘when?’” says Igor Kutsenko, the president of an advertising agency Orange. He with his parents and other 9 Russians have booked seats on the nearest flights by the first private rocket glider SpaceShipOne intended for suborbital space flights. 

Space flights with a labor union vouchers used to be promised by Sergei Korolev. Now the Virgin Galactic company offers the tours to the orbit with the price of $200,000.   

As a common airliner, the carrier White Knight Two will take off at the space launching site in New Mexico and will reach the altitude of 15 km where the space vehicle Space Ship Two will get separated from it and will reach the triple supersonic speed and the altitude of 110 km, which is formally the lower border of the space. After that, it will glide down slowly to the Earth.

Six passengers of SpaceShipTwo are promised 2 hours of flight, 4 minutes of zero gravity, panoramic views of the Earth and the 6g forces.

The first carrier will be taken out of hangar on 28 July, but the flights will start not earlier than 2010. Nonetheless, about 100 prospective passengers have already paid for their tickets, while over 85,000 people have left their applications at the website of Virgin Galactic.   

Virgin Galactic is not the only company to see good commercial prospects in the flights for the middle class. A few European and American firms offer similar projects. And Space Adventures, that has been engaged with organization of cosmic tourists’ flights to the international space station, has started construction of suborbital cosmic space vehicles at the Russian plant after Myasishchev. The first flight is promised to be executed next year. 

Whoever won in this commercial cosmic race, the loser will be Roskosmos. So far it has been the monopolist in the business: it was only possible to see the Earth from the board of the international space station.