So, it’s official… The mid-1990s trademarks for Virgin Galactic — nice play on the Virgin Atlantic moniker — have finally been leveraged with Burt Rutan’s technological genius into a new commercial space tourism venture, announced today in London by Sir Richard himself…   (Bold/emphasis added by me.)

British airline magnate Richard Branson has announced a hugely ambitious plan for the world’s first commercial space flights, saying he would send "thousands" of fee-paying astronauts into orbit in the next five years.

Branson, a flamboyant communicator and high-profile tycoon, said his Virgin Atlantic airline had signed a technology licensing deal with the US company behind SpaceShipOne, which in June became the first private manned craft to travel to space. …

In a near-messianic speech, Mr Branson pledged that his principal aim was to make space travel possible for ordinary people.

Near-messianic? That’s par for the course with Branson.   The BBC has more information:

"We’ve done quite a lot of research; we think there are about 3,000 people out there who would want to do this," Sir Richard told the BBC.

"If it is a success, we want to move into orbital flights and then, possibly, even get a hotel up there."

A hotel?? Clearly this is one of the most ambitious ventures ever announced, even by Branson’s standards. And yet, consider: Burt Rutan designed the Voyager balloon (which his brother Dick piloted) that circumnavigated the globe. Branson himself had already set records crossing the Atlantic and Pacific by balloon, and would’ve completed the world trip except for bad weather. Now they’ve teamed up for this new venture, with genius Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, the world’s third richest man, thrown into the mix just for good measure as well. This sounds just about perfect. Sure, it’s almost insanely ambitious in its scope, but I can’t imagine a better team assembled to tackle just such a challenge. Onward and upward!