GLASGOW,
Scotland — The private company planning to take wealthy
tourists to the edge of the atmosphere starting in late 2009 or early 2010 has
refused a million-dollar proposal to film a sex video while the participants
are floating gravity free, the company's president said.
Will
Whitehorn, president of Virgin
Galactic, said the offer, from an unidentified party, "was $1 million,
up front, for a sex-in-space movie. That was money we had to refuse, I'm
afraid."
Whitehorn disclosed
the rejected transaction here Sept. 30 during the International Astronautical
Congress. He said Virgin Galactic, part of Richard Branson's Virgin Group, is
planning to begin flights of the WhiteKnightTwo
aircraft in late 2009 or early 2010 from Sierra County, N.M.
The
aircraft will carry
the SpaceShipTwo craft, which is released during flight and then climbs to
100 kilometers in altitude to offer fee-paying passengers around five minutes
of weightlessness as the vehicle approaches the limits of the Earth's
atmosphere.
Virgin
Galactic is charging about $200,000 per person for the two-hour flight. The
company has received $40 million in deposits from 280 customers, Whitehorn
said. Earlier this year, Whitehorn estimated that Virgin Galactic had spent
some $100 million developing
its business, mainly in research and development of the aircraft by Scaled
Composites LLC of Mojave, Calif.
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