Space Plane!

Guess what's here in San Francisco? If you said drag queens and the ever-present threat of earthquakes you'd be correct. If you said a space plane you'd be correct and topical. Good for you! Virgin (the company, not 'a virgin') has decided that San Francisco's airport is going to be the home base for their space-tourism company: Virgin Galactic (not to be confused with Babylon 5 fans). That's right, now we've got a Spaceport.

Suck it, Oakland!

"Raauuhhuauuaeehhauuuu.'"

-Arnold Schwarzenegger

I know, a space plane, awesome right? But this is the real world, so let's walk it back a bit. The imaginatively named Spaceship Two, is basically a tour bus to the stars that carries passengers to 'space' and back. Why the quotes around space? Well, space is kind of a vaguely defined boundary, and at 68 miles low-orbit might be more accurate. Sorry space cadets, this thing is not taking you to Mars anytime soon (which isn't necessarily a bad thing, see right).

Maybe he should have called it
'Classy Galactic.'

In fact, the name 'Virgin Galactic' is entirely misleading. British Airways flies to and from Britain. Aer Lingus flies to Lingus. Calling this 'Galactic' would be like calling it American Airlines if it only flew from JFK to LaGuardia. Yes, I suppose the upper atmosphere is within the traditionally defined confines of the Milky Way but c'mon millionaire playboy and Virgin founder Richard Branson (see left), The Galaxy is a really big place and the 'space plane' covers like one-infinitieth of it. What gives? Was the name Virgin Mesosphere taken?

Sorry bright-eyed youngsters, your
futures are worth 1 ride on the
space plane. What can you do?

Also, it turns out space is really expensive. Really, really expensive. Like a ride on Spaceship Two costs $200,000. Look, I don't have anything against the super-rich (except of course, seething jealousy), but for real. $200,000 can put four kids through college and some jackass is going to blow it on 15 minutes of weightlessness? You know, the Y's got a pool, it's basically the same thing and it costs $50 a year...also, the pool noodles are included. I checked.

Pffft...idiot.

Ok, so it's expensive as hell and 'only' goes 68 miles up, but it's still the dawning of a new age of space flight, right? Well, not really. It hasn't actually dawned yet. Virgin Galactic is selling tickets for space flights that haven't actually been scheduled yet, and they've made like ten million dollars doing it. That's right, Richard Branson has made ten million dollars selling theoretical future space flights to 50 extremely wealthy stupid people. Guess we're all chumps for showing up to work and you know, doing stuff.


Speaking of which, I'd like to take this opportunity to announce that I am now taking pre-orders for Hoverboards. That's right, Hoverboards: Available eventually.

Hoverboards: Dare. Dare to send me $5,000 plus shipping. You can win if you dare.
p.s. watch out for rocks.