An unnamed 17-year-old Canadian is set to boldly go where no-one his age has ever gone before – space.
The Calgary teen booked his ticket when he was 16 and will fly next year after he becomes 18, the minimum age limit for billionaire Sir Richard Branson’s forthcoming Virgin Galactic space travel service.
“He had the money for the space trip put down for him when he was 16,” said travel agent Michael Broadhurst. “He is actually the only one at the moment who is under 18 on the list.”
Although the boy is unnamed, it is understood that he will be accompanied by a parent for the trip, which costs $200,000 per ticket. The current record for the youngest space traveller is Russian cosmonaut Gherman Titov, who went into orbit at the age of 25.
440 deposits have already been put down for the space tourism project, with deposit fees totalling over $55 million. Famous budding passengers include Stephen Hawking and Russell Brand, who received a birthday present ticket from his pop star wife Katy Perry in June 2010.
Virgin’s Spaceship Two (pictured above), also known as the VSS Enterprise, is a rocket-powered vessel that will make the voyages and can carry up to six passengers and two pilots.
Flights will travel at three times faster than the speed of sound and are to include around six minutes of weightlessness and a suborbital view 67 miles (109 km) above Earth.
If you’re feeling a little jealous at this new dawn of tourist or perhaps understandably put off by the price of space flight, don’t be. Virgin Galactic president Will Whitehorn reckons “We hope within five or six years to get the price down to considerably lower than that; certainly below $100,000 after five or six years.” Either way, start saving those pennies.
