Sir Richard Branson, the founder and president of Virgin Galactic, says that his commercial spacecraft will be carrying its first paying customers within a year. Virgin’s initial flights will be sub-orbital, but Sir Richard acknowledges that his long-term goal is orbital flight — he just won’t say when that will happen.In other news, the European debt crisis may be spreading to Italy. Although Italy’s economy is strong, it has an enormous amount of public debt, and may become vulnerable if Portugal or Spain gets bailed out. France holds a lot of Italian debt, so it may be next.
To see the headlines and the articles, open the full news post.
Thanks to 4symbols, Barry Rubin, C. Cantoni, DF, Diana West, DonVito, Fjordman, Gaia, Insubria, JD, KGS, LN, Mary Abdelmassih, Nilk, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.
Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.
Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.
