London

As addresses go, 6 Half Moon Street is a belter for a company that is planning to become the world’s first space-tourism operator. Just don’t expect a glistening sci-fi citadel when you get there. Half Moon Street is one of Mayfair’s shadier thoroughfares: most of its mansion flats are uncurtained, its Victorian apartment blocks are coated in grime, and as for number six, only a tiny Virgin Galactic logo on the entryphone gives a clue to its interplanetary interests. This could just as easily be an upmarket brothel – for the star-struck. Feature continues

Nor do things get much more futuristic inside. Number six is a warren of rooms, newly painted in white and blue; there is a smattering of desks, computers and chairs, and half a dozen enthusiastic young staff are working at keyboards. Only a few posters, depicting rockets taking off and landing, give any clue to the extraordinary nature of the business being pursued in the building: the creation of the world’s first operational astronautics company.

‘We could have had the use of a number of different buildings in the Virgin empire, ones much flashier than this,’ explains Stephen Attenborough, vice-president of Virgin Galactic. ‘But the address was irresistible. People might think we are having a laugh, of course, but this is real. This is going to be the world’s first space-tourism headquarters.’

Virgin Galactic's HQ on the aptly named street

Virgin Galactic was originally set up by Richard Branson in 1999 in a cramped office inside Virgin’s main London headquarters in Leicester Square. The company was created to take advantage of a new generation of rockets which were then being developed by private entrepreneurs competing to win the $10 million Ansari X-prize. That prize was eventually won by Burt Rutan, the maverick California aerospace designer whose spaceship exploited lightweight graphite materials and a revolutionary wing system: technology which has now been bought up by Branson.

By late 2008 or early 2009, Virgin Galactic says it will fire a spaceplane, built to Rutan’s specifications, that will carry six passengers into the heavens to ‘slip the surly bonds of Earth’. However, this will not be a high-technology trip à la Stanley Kubrick’s ‘A Space Odyssey’. There will be no stewardesses, no space hotels, and no zero-gravity toilets. Passengers won’t even go into orbit.

Instead, they will don jumpsuits at the company’s spaceport, which is to be built at Upham, New Mexico, before clambering into a spaceplane – the VSS (Virgin Space Ship) Enterprise – that will be strapped to the belly of a conventional jet. Locked together, the two craft will then take off and fly to an altitude of 55,000 feet. Then the Enterprise will be released. A second or two later, its rocket engine will be ignited and the little craft will be hurled towards the edge of the atmosphere, 70 miles above the planet. After a couple of minutes’ intense acceleration, the engine will cut out and the ship will coast in weightless silence. Up here, you can see the Earth curve against the jet-black background of space. New Mexico is a tiny patch of brown in the remote distance. You are now a member of the 70-Mile High Club.

Free to float around the cabin, Virgin’s customers will have six or seven minutes to enjoy the experience and indulge in an ecstasy of camera-clicking. Then the VSS Enterprise will begin to arc back to Earth, its stubby wings twisting upwards to turn the little plane into a giant shuttlecock which can flutter down to Earth. Back in the atmosphere, the craft will glide to an airport landing. And that is what you will get for your money – all $200,000 of it. Not great value, you might think: a hair-raising launch, a stomach-churning float inside a cramped cabin and then a queasy plummet back to Earth. But there are plenty for whom a mere glimpse of the blackness of space and a few minutes in zero-gravity would be a bargain at ten times the price.

Attenborough says Virgin Galactic has now attracted 42,000 online registrations from future customers. In addition, the company has received commitments from celebrities that include Victoria Principal (from ‘Dallas’), William Shatner, Sigourney Weaver and Bryan Singer (director of ‘X-Men’ and ‘Superman Returns’). Others include the French designer Philippe Starck, who created Virgin Galactic’s logo, and PR guru Trevor Beattie, of FCUK fame. Even Kate Moss (in space nobody can hear Babyshambles) has expressed an interest in buying a ticket.