Elon Musk Orders Spacecraft Tickets From Rival Virgin Galactic

Richard Brason and Elon Musk, two friends who support each other on a mission to fly into space. (photo: twitter @RichardBrason(

JAKARTA - The surprising news comes from SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk who has reportedly booked a seat into suborbital space with Virgin Galactic.

According to a report published by The Wall Street Journal from SPACE, Tuesday, July 13, Musk has ordered the spacecraft seats with a deposit of 10,000 US dollars. The recently stated full ticket price is $250,000. However, it is not yet clear when Musk's flight will take off.

Previously, Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, made the first spacewalk. The first manned space flight was aboard Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity craft.

Meanwhile, Virgin Galactic said it hoped to launch a space tourism service by 2022 after two more test flights this year. So far, Virgin Galactic has sold around 600 seats after promoting sales a few years ago.

Musk was also present to watch Branson's flight, which took off from Spaceport America in New Mexico, Virgin Galactic's commercial hub. The two billionaires are actually friends, as hours before a Sunday morning flight, Branson tweeted a photo of himself standing next to Musk without his shoes on.

"Big day ahead. Nice to start the morning with a friend. Feeling good, feeling excited, feeling ready," said the 70-year-old Branson.

"Elon is a friend, and maybe I'll travel on one of his ships one day."

In fact, Musk also has plans to launch a space tourism service, although SpaceX will be more complex, offering several days in orbit with Crew Dragon. Unlike SpaceX, Virgin Galactic only offers 4 minutes and stunning views of Earth.

While it's entirely possible Musk could travel into space on one of his own rockets, the training process for Virgin Galactic's flights is so much shorter that it will take less time than his busy schedule to oversee not only SpaceX, but his electric car company Tesla as well.

In addition, SpaceX does not yet have an exact timetable for launching a civilian-only spacewalk, although it plans to do the first in September using the specially designed Crew Dragon spacecraft.