BENICIA -- At least when it comes to space flight, local residents won't have to go far, far away to find a travel agency. <\/p>\n
Benicia's Bye Bye Birdees Travel Consulting is selling XCOR Aerospace flights at a cost of $95,000 per person. A $20,000 deposit qualifies passengers for a four-day orientation, medical screening and G-force training at an Arizona resort. <\/p>\n
\"It's going to be the wave of the future,\" said Bye Bye Birdees owner Juliet Vercelli, whose home-based agency also does destination weddings, reunions and romantic get-aways. \"The most exciting thing to me is the idea of, in 10 or 20 years, being able to travel halfway around the world in one or two hours.\" <\/p>\n
XCOR is one of a handful of U.S. firms building spaceships to fly passengers and cargo into suborbital space. Others include Virgin Galactic, which is testing a six-passenger, two-pilot vehicle that would launch from a large plane. <\/p>\n
Mojave-based XCOR expects to start testing its one-passenger, one-pilot rocket plane later this year, and then fly initial paying participants by the end of 2013. <\/p>\n
\"We plan to start flight tests in Mojave ... and intend to operate regular operations from Mojave,\" spokesman Bryan Campen said. \"We will eventually move flight test operations to a new R&D center we're developing in Midland, Texas.\" <\/p>\n
XCOR also plans to launch from other sites, including Kennedy Space Center in Florida and Curacao. <\/p>\n
Typical flight time will be about 35 minutes from take-off <\/p>\n
In addition to tourists, the company hopes to market its flights to commercial and scientific researchers. <\/p>\n
Vercelli said she became interested in space tourism two years ago at a luxury travel show in Las Vegas. There she met RocketShip Tours founder Jules Klar, who was the first to partner with XCOR to develop human space flights for the paying public. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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Space flight bookings available at Benicia travel agency<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" BENICIA -- At least when it comes to space flight, local residents won't have to go far, far away to find a travel agency. Benicia's Bye Bye Birdees Travel Consulting is selling XCOR Aerospace flights at a cost of $95,000 per person. A $20,000 deposit qualifies passengers for a four-day orientation, medical screening and G-force training at an Arizona resort. Continue reading