I predicted that space tourism would soon be available and priced under $500,000 per trip. You can read the original June post entitled "Governments Don't Price Well".
Now, Richard Branson has announced the formation of a new company called Virgin Galactic that will offer trips for around $200,000 as soon as 2007 (for details, go to this site, and download the press release from the link at the bottom of the page).
My reasoning for this was a combined application of basic economics and organizational behavior. The basic economics tells us that a profit maximizing decision maker will offer a product at a price that is related to its marginal cost in a specific way, and that a decision maker that is not profit maximizing (like, say, a NASA bureaucrat) will price the product at a much higher (a** covering) price. From the press release:
...the price per seat on each flight, which will include at least three days of pre-flight training, are expected to start at around £115,000 ($190,000). Virgin will reinvest the proceeds in developing a new generation of vehicles for further space ventures. To date the cheapest space tourism experiences in government built and taxpayer funded spaceships cost over $15,000,000 per seat.
Tip of the hat to BoingBoing for the post entitled "Richard Branson's Space Tourism Foray - 'Virgin Galactic'"
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