Arab company charters space craft in world first

A Dubai-based Arab company has become the first ever in the world to charter a space craft for its top management, ArabianBusiness.com can reveal.

The company last week handed over $500,000 as a deposit to Virgin Galactic, to charter one of the company’s commercial spacecrafts.

Details of the company are likely to be made public in July this year. Sources suggest the two hour flight in space will take place some time in 2010.

The total deal, the first ever of its kind, is worth $1.2 million. It is understood the deal was done through Sharaf Travel, Virgin Galactic’s UAE agent.

Virgin Galactic is expected to begin its commercial space flights next year, with tickets for the first 100 passengers going for $200,000 per passenger.

The Virgin Galactic experience involves boarding SpaceShipTwo which is attached to a mother-ship known as WhiteKnightTwo.

Following a run-way take-off the space craft will climb to an altitude of 50,000 feet where the spaceship will be released and the rocket ignited.

The rocket burn acceleration powers the spaceship to the speed of sound in just 10 seconds, and over three times the speed of sound in under 30 seconds.

The G-force surge will push the clients back into their seats as they head into the darkness of space to an altitude of 110 kilometres above the earth's surface.

When the rocket motor shuts down, all passengers, who by this stage are officially ‘astronauts', will experience the silence of space, and majestic views of earth as they float around the large cabin in zero gravity for four minutes.

The spaceship returns to earth, passing back through the atmosphere using a unique wing feathering technology to ensure stability and to minimize heat intensity, before making a normal runway landing.

In total the space flight will last for around two hours.