Spaceflight Companies Look to R&D Clients for Repeat Business

Commercial space travel is almost here. For real this time. Sometime in 2014, Virgin Galactic will be able to fly 100 kilometers into the sky and put you in near-zero gravity for a few minutes. The price tag: $250,000. Already Angelina Jolie, Ashton Kutcher, Katy Perry, Justin Bieber, and Richard Branson, the company’s eccentric billionaire founder, have lined up with 600 other people to get on flights. Booking a flight on rival Xcor Aerospace will cost roughly $100,000, the company says. Blue Origin, the space company launched by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, says it’s close behind but hasn’t put out a price list just yet.

Musicians, actors, and wealthy corporate executives won’t keep these companies flying forever. Virgin estimates it will run through its star-studded list in 12 to 18 months. So most of the space companies expect to turn to a less glamorous source of business to keep them going: companies and researchers in search of a little time at near-zero gravity to conduct experiments.