Space - the final frontier

BEN CAMPBELL

SPACE AGE: House of Travel Botany Junction director Katrina Cole thrives on selling people tickets to the verge of outer space.

VIRGIN GALACTIC

NEW ERA: A Virgin Galactic graphic of the VSS Enterprise suspended in sub-orbital space.

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SPACE agent Katrina Cole has a fair idea of what propels people into the outer reaches of our atmosphere.

"They've all said: `I just knew from when I was small that I wanted to go into space'," she says.

And for $200,000 she'll happily sign people up.

Ms Cole is one of the world's top 10 sellers of Virgin Galactic spaceflights with four budding Kiwi astronauts on her books.

Another three South Islanders also have tickets for the as-yet unscheduled maiden voyage above California's Mojave Desert.

Nearly 400 people, mostly from the United States, are eagerly awaiting the day they step on board the recently unveiled VSS Enterprise to experience what California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger called "the world's first human commercial spacecraft".

The Botany travel agent says it's "really cool" to be involved.

"It's not something for everybody – I understand that. But it's on the frontier of something that's amazing," she says.

"We've got the most astronauts per capita in the world.

"I think that says a lot about Kiwis."

The Enterprise will detach from the mothership at 15km before vertically rocketing at over three times the speed of sound to reach sub-orbital space.

At 110km up, the six passengers and two pilots will witness weightlessness, see the curvature of earth and the atmosphere encasing it before gliding home in under three hours.

But it's not exclusively for the rich, Ms Cole says.

One of the seven would-be Kiwi astronauts has mortgaged his house to go.

"His aim is to be one of the first 100 to go up."

He said he'd always be able to pay off a mortgage.

Kiwi ticket holders include adventurer Ross Maxwell, Rocket Lab co-director Mark Rocket, and The Hyperfactory co-founder Derek Handley.

Visiting space has never been a "burning passion" for Ms Cole but "the more I get involved in it the more I think what an experience.

"I've got other things on my bucket list before this but, especially when I talk to Ross, I can't help but be enthused. He keeps saying come with me. I'm almost tempted to say yes, but I don't have the money."

Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic is now expecting to launch in late 2011 or early 2012.

The company aims to have taken 100,000 passengers with a fleet of 50 spacecraft over the next 15 years.

- © Fairfax NZ News