How to Get a Piece of the Private Space Race

When the pool of billionaire passengers trails off, or if the company isn't able to bring the cost down far enough to make space accessible to lower rungs of the 1%, Virgin even foresees a future where sub-orbital flights are used simply for travel purposes. Where the Concorde turned a seven-and-a-half hour flight from New York to London into a three hour affair, Virgin's suborbital flights could do it in an hour.

While there are no official plans to develop that capability yet, construction has begun on New Mexico's Spaceport America, which will serve as a headquarters for Virgin's launches, and neighboring Colorado has applied for permission to build its own spaceport this year to accommodate the anticipated burst of interest in boldly going where only a few hundred men and women have gone before.

And Virgin will have some competition in snatching up those dollars.