Holy crap, it turns out I'm not the only connection between New Mexico and Sweden. The other connection is... space travel! See, New Mexico is building a spaceport, where Virgin Galactic will offer trips to suborbital space for about $200,000, beginning in 2011.According to thelocal.se (Stockholm's English-language news Web site), the Ice Hotel in Kiruna, Sweden just started selling Virgin Galactic tickets as well. Spaceport Sweden is projected to open in Kiruna in 2012, and will be the main European hub for recreational space travel.
If you haven't heard about this whole space tourism thing, well, get ready to become obsessed, like me. I've been keeping an eagle-eye on the Spaceport New Mexico project since it was first announced in 2006. Virgin mega-mogul Richard Branson came up with the idea to make rich folks pay for a joy ride into space, and hundreds have already prepaid in the U.S. (before the economic meltdown, naturally). The idea is that within a few years of the space tourism launch, there could be really quick and awesome suborbital flights from, say, L.A. to Tokyo in a just a few hours. When you go way up into suborbital space, you massively cut down the time it would ordinarily take to slice through the atmosphere and get from point A to point B.
Anyway, this Sweden thing is a new and exciting development! Well, new to me, anyway. Thelocal.se has been on the case since January '07. Anyway, the reason for the Kiruna location in way northern Sweden? So space tourists can fly through the Northern Lights. Amazing!
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