Swarthmore Travel Agent Selling $200,000 Tickets to Space

Today marks the first rocket-powered test flight for SpaceShipTwo, Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic spacecraft that will take tourists up, up, and away into space–well, sub-orbital space, anyway. Stephen Hawking, Tom Hanks, Ashton Kutcher, Katy Perry, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Mário Ferreira have reportedly signed up for future trips, and you can too with the help of Swarthmore’s Park Avenue Travel, a travel agency for the well-off.

Park Avenue’s Craig Bush explains that he is a “Virtuoso Accredited Space Agent”, meaning that he’s one of a few dozen people in the world authorized to sell tickets for Virgin Galactic, and, really, you probably don’t want to buy tickets to space from unauthorized agents. So far, he’s sold two, and not to local clients. Tickets will set you back $200,000 each, and you’re actually only in (sub-orbital) space for 5 to 7 minutes. Me, I’d wait for the moon trip, though the below animation does make a SpaceShipTwo flight look fun.

The photo at right shows SpaceShipTwo being released from the mother ship (yes, they actually call it that).