Space tourism continues to be subdued, at 5 years of 1st flight

When a private spacecraft that flew over California for its designers won a prize of 10 million, Alan Walton, investors in new projects, was 68 and thought he could soon make himself a rocket ride.
Walton paid $ 200,000 to be among the first space tourists who would make a suborbital journey above the Earth aboard a spacecraft for Virgin Galactic.
Now, Walton intends to ask for his money back if there is no definite date for a launch next April, when he met 74 years.
"This would be the highlight of my age," he said.

It has been five years since SpaceShipOne, the first manned space with private funding, won the Ansari X Prize, on October 4, 2004, to demonstrate that a reusable rocket with a passenger could fly over 100km (62 miles), once a week, so its use for tourism would be reliable, safe and viable in the commercial.
The enthusiasm for that year, SpaceShipOne was so even before the flight that won the award, British tycoon Richard Branson announced a deal to use technology in a second-generation design, SpaceShipTwo, for the purpose of carrying passengers into space flights under the name Virgin Galactic in 2007.

It seemed that anyone with enough money could soon experience what Brian Binnie, pilot of SpaceShipOne, it was "literally the ecstasy".
"When you turn off the engine, the world is revealed before your eyes," he said. Passengers could see the planet from a great height and would experience the sensation of weightlessness.

But turning that dream into reality has taken longer than expected time, and space flight remain exclusive for government-trained astronauts and a handful of tycoons who have paid millions of dollars for trips aboard Russian rockets to the International Space Station.

Still, Peter Diamandis, X Prize founder, denies that the project is stalled.
It has invested over 1,000 million dollars in the industry, we have overcome regulatory obstacles and even three different passenger ships will be ready within 18 to 24 months, to start the flights, he said.

"We will have another strong emotion that will draw the public's attention once they begin to operate vehicles and people start to fly," he said.