Local travel agency's pitch: 2 hours in space for $200,000

For jet-setters buoyed by high-tech wealth and bored with Bora Bora, a Woodinville travel agent has your ticket: a quick getaway to space.

You don't need a passport, and the trip takes only two hours.

Angie Lepley's business, Tangerine Travel, recently became the only travel agency in the state — and one of 45 in the nation — accredited to sell flights to space on Virgin Galactic.

The Seattle area, with its high concentration of "space nuts and egos," is a prime place to attract affluent adventurers, Lepley said.

"Everybody's been to Iceland," Lepley said. "This is all unknown."

Virgin Galactic anticipates test flights next year, with passenger travel beginning 12 to 18 months afterward.

Some aren't so sure safe commercial spaceflight can happen that quickly.

Over the past several years, the Federal Aviation Administration has developed rules and regulations governing suborbital human spaceflight, but since no paying passengers have participated in such flights, "the true risk is unknown," said Henry Hertzfeld, senior research professor at the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University.

The development of safe, reusable vehicles that can launch people into space frequently and return to Earth — the linchpin in consumer space travel — could still be a long way off, he said.

But Virgin Galactic has big plans for the next few years.

An offshoot of Virgin Atlantic airlines, it's the product of a multimillion-dollar deal between Virgin's founder, Richard Branson, and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who bankrolled the prototype private spaceship known as SpaceShipOne.

Built by Burt Rutan, SpaceShipOne won the $10 million Ansari X prize in 2004 for reaching the edge of space twice in less than one week.

Hertzfeld said he believes SpaceShipOne was "successful largely because these pilots were extraordinarily good."

But for now, space is still the realm of astronauts, researchers and the superrich. In April, Medina billionaire Charles Simonyi became the fifth participant in a program run by a Virginia company called Space Adventures.

Simonyi, whose research formed the basis for Microsoft Word, reportedly shelled out $25 million for the 14-day trip that took him to the international space station via the Russian spacecraft Soyuz.

Virgin Galactic's trip promises to bring the cost closer to earth with a suborbital flight that lasts a little over two hours and costs $200,000.

The flight will venture into the margins of space but will not orbit the Earth, as Simonyi did.

Virgin is planning to launch trips from the Mojave Desert in California, with a permanent base to be set up in New Mexico, Lepley said.

SpaceShipTwo, which is being developed, is expected to transport the first customers.

At takeoff, SpaceShipTwo would be attached to a mother ship. When the mother ship reaches the 50,000-foot level, it would release SpaceShipTwo, which would rocket into space and float there, letting passengers experience zero gravity for about four minutes. SpaceShipTwo will then glide back to Earth on its own.

The trip includes three days of training and medical tests. Each flight will carry six passengers and two pilots, in leather seats that tilt and move around depending on the stage of flight, Lepley said.

At least 200 people have put down deposits of $20,000 to $100,000 on Virgin Galactic trips, Lepley said. She's just started to market it and hasn't taken any deposits herself.

In January, Lepley went to Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., where she experienced the force of "three Gs" in a centrifuge and learned how to pitch the trip to prospective travelers.

She will share her experience Wednesday with members of the Pacific Northwest Business Travel Association.

Next month, she'll host an event at her Woodinville office to introduce Virgin Galactic to clients.

Recent tragedy has marred the Virgin Galactic effort. In July, an explosion during tests of components for a rocket motor for SpaceShipTwo killed three workers in California.

The accident "underscores the fact that you're dealing with highly explosive materials and with a risky business," said Hertzfeld, the space-policy researcher.

Because of the risks, commercial space travel may be a decade or more away, and will likely resemble an adventure "akin to climbing Mount Everest" rather than tourism, he said.

Lepley doesn't think it's all that far off, and doesn't believe hawking an untested trip will hinder her credibility. She never considered that selling space flights could have a downside.

The idea is innovative, she said, and if anyone can make space tourism a consumer product it's Branson, who is known for epic hot-air balloon flights and other feats of derring-do.

Given a good economy, "everything is pointing to it catching on and becoming more and more accepted and reaching further," Lepley said.

To infinity, maybe, or beyond.

Amy Roe: 206-464-3347 or aroe@seattletimes.com