A Milestone in History.

... and now you're awake, in the world of the future. That's right, the world's first spaceport has officially opened in New Mexico, USA! This is so absolutely amazing that I'm going to try my hardest to explain this without falling out of my seat.

The entire venture is backed by British billionaire Richard Branson (if you can recall, he was discussing doing this years ago), and is designed to take space tourists to the very edges of our atmosphere, effectively into outer space. The privately owned company is called, prepare yourselves.... Virgin Galactic. The spaceport itself consists of a 3km runway and (so-far) two spacecraft: a mother-ship called White Knight 2 that will take a smaller ship, Spaceship 2, to proper altitude before launching it into the darkness and beauty of space.

The price of one flight is over $200,000 and it lasts for a whopping three hours. Oddly enough, that seems like a good deal to me. Inside the spacecraft you don't have to just sit and stare out at darkness, you can literally get out and float around in the spacecraft! Here are a few pictures from the official Virgin Galactic website (be sure to check out the website below for more multimedia and articles).

Image Credit: Virgin Galactic.

Image Credit: Virgin Galactic

Now, I cannot possibly overstate the amount of sci-fi fantasies this will fulfill, not just to millionaires who can afford regular flights to space now but to many individuals who simply love pushing the frontiers of space exploration and human ingenuity. To think that in about 40 years since NASA's first test flights and overtly ambitious plans to get a man on the moon, we'd be one step closer to getting a much larger percentage of the population visiting space. Despite the fact that this isn't exactly the Millennium Falcon going into hyper drive, I still believe this moment is nothing short of a milestone in the history of our species. The sheer simplicity and reality of it all is far more beautiful than anything science fiction could have ever conceived for this moment.

To check out the latest news on this exciting new development, check out the Virgin Galactic website:
http://www.virgingalactic.com/