Space tourism depends on client buzz

By Alicia Chang

updated 12:14 p.m. ET July 31, 2006

LOS ANGELES - They are celestial missionaries of sorts: professionals with a wild side, celebrities with money to burn and semi-retirees with a hankering for one last thrill.

What they share is a desire to float weightless for a mere five minutes. They've also got $200,000 to book a flight into space.

Even without a guarantee that they would ever blast off, these leisurenauts are voluntarily promoting commercial space travel — still several years away, at least — with an almost religious fervor in speeches, writings, even art exhibits.

The buzz is about Virgin Galactic, the fledgling spaceline founded by British airline mogul Sir Richard Branson. It strategically chooses its clients to be the public face of the company in an effort to draw attention to and, it hopes, corner the infant space tourism market.

Take Trevor Beattie, a London-based advertising guru with a trademark mop of curly black hair. Beattie was in Los Angeles at a space conference this spring hyping a flight he expects to take in 2008 — the program still awaits federal approval and the completion of its rocketship.

Flanked by Virgin Galactic executives, Beattie gushed about his idol, moonwalker Buzz Aldrin, who happened to be in the crowd.

"When I was a kid, I wanted to be Buzz Aldrin. Now I'm a fully grown adult ... and I still want to be Buzz Aldrin," said Beattie, 46, who has agreed to create for free a 60-second commercial for Virgin Galactic that will hit theaters in the fall.

In the ultra-secretive world of personal space flight, Virgin Galactic is depending on customers such as Beattie to spread the word. While "founders," as the first 100 Virgin Galactic passengers are known, aren't required to promote the company, many eagerly do.

One is Namira Salim, a 35-year-old artist who splits her time between Monaco and the United Arab Emirates.

Inspired by her founder role, Salim will host an exhibit focused on space tourism in her native Pakistan in September featuring a handcrafted replica of SpaceShipOne, which in 2004 became the first privately funded, manned rocket plane to reach space. Virgin Galactic has contracted with SpaceShipOne designer Burt Rutan to develop the suborbital spacecraft SpaceShipTwo that would initially launch from the Mojave Desert and later at a proposed spaceport in New Mexico.

Salim, who used inheritance money to reserve her seat, chafed at the notion that only the rich can afford to go to space.

"If founders don't make their contribution today, then the common man won't be able to fly tomorrow," she said.

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