North Norfolk man's space dream

"EVERYBODY has a dream, mine happens to be expensive."

The words of Richard Burr, the north Norfolk man set to join an elite rank by becoming a 'space tourist' at the eye watering cost of $200,000 - around £100,000.

The 52-year-old property developer and businessman from Aylsham sits at number 205 on the list of people getting ready to board the first Virgin Galactic flights, which will allow ordinary folk to become astronauts.

Mr Burr has already stumped up £75,000 of the cash but still has something of a wait.

Those taking part will board a horizontally launched purpose built 'mothership' aircraft, which carries with it the spaceship, before being flown to a height where the spaceship can be detached and propelled into orbit. Two pilots and six passengers will be in the spaceship on each flight.

In January, Mr Burr travelled to New York to meet with other prospective astronauts, Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson and to attend the launch of the final design plans for the aircraft and spaceship.

The process now should see the finished aircraft and spaceship “rolled out” by July, tests conducted for several months, licences awarded and the first commercial flights by the end of next year, said Mr Burr.

“Because I am not top of the list I would expect to be up in early 2010, although that could change of course according to the process taking longer, or people dropping out.

“It's very exciting of course, but I wouldn't say I was excited in a schoolboy way, although that will probably come as it nears.

“The prospect of looking out of the window and seeing the stars and the earth is an incredible thought.

“People will think it is a huge amount of money, but bear in mind that if you look back to the first trans Atlantic flights, people were paying what would now be around £30,000 to get to America.”

The trip itself will be made from New Mexico and will last about two hours, made up of an aircraft climb of an hour, a spaceship boost into space in less than two minutes, a 'zero g' weightlessness experience of four to five minutes, a re-entry into the atmosphere of two minutes and a glided landing of 50 minutes.

Virgin Galactic have stated they hope to fly 500 people in the first year and 50,000 in the first 10 years.

Visit www.virgingalactic.com for more information.