Going around the world is passe. Nowadays the fashionable traveler aims a little higher — for outer space.
Virgin Galactic LLC., seeking to become the world's first commercial space carrier, held a news conference Thursday in Tokyo to get Japanese to sign up for its planned suborbital tourism program.
The company, a part of Britain's Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd., could launch its first commercial flight from the United States as early as 2010, provided it is fully satisfied with the spacecraft's safety after a series of test flights, officials said.