Virgin Opens World's First Commercial Spaceport

... as Richard Branson takes the insane billionaire schtick to crazy new heights.

The world's first commercial spaceport opened yesterday in New Mexico, with British billionaire Richard Branson heralding it as a "history-making day" for his space tourism company, Virgin Galactic. The spaceport, officially named the Virgin Galactic Gateway to Space (but called Spaceport America for brevity's sake), is a joint venture between Virgin and the government of New Mexico, coming in at a cost of $209 million. Stuck out in the middle of the New Mexico desert, the spaceport will be able to hold five commercial spacecrafts known as SpaceShipTwos, as well as two jet planes that carry the spacecrafts to launch altitudes called WhiteKnightTwo. While the crafts are still undergoing safety trials, Branson hopes to have the first commercial tourist flights take off next year, as 455 people have already forked over considerable sums to take trips to the outer limits of Earth's atmosphere. Each flight will take about two-and-a-half hours, during which passengers will get to experience five minutes of weightlessness.