Up, up, and away!

As Sir Richard Branson announces a deal to secure the first commercial flights into space through Virgin Galactic, I wonder if the proposed journeys will be similar to Virgin Atlantic or Virgin Trains. BY actually striking a deal to use the SpaceShipOne technology, some may claim it'll be more like the airline, but it's taken several years of using old BR rolling stock before Virgin Trains got around to bringing in their long-promised new Pendolino trains. I wonder if some of his early space passengers may find themselves being strapped into old Titan boosters with an apology for the inconvenience while the new models are tested?

Update: And it probably wasn't a good day for this to happen:

Passengers hoping to travel on the 5.28am between Holyhead, north Wales, and London were delayed by at least 30 minutes following technical problems.

And about 80 passengers were forced off Virgin Trains’ flagship Royal Scot 9.49am Glasgow to London train at Carlisle because of possible “wheel flattening“.

The Holyhead service developed technical problems with the electrical control system that links the carriages with the locomotive.

Annoying when you're 100km from Glasgow, but probably not the sort of thing you want happening 100km above the Earth.