(continued)

You seem to have successfully decompressed luxury travel. It was all about the Concorde, the Ritz, and ascots back in the day.
There's certainly a side of Britain that has got a stuffy element to it. It's less so now—fortunately, I think.

The pomp and circumstance backlash is still strong over there?
Definitely. I was knighted but I would never dream of using the "Sir Richard" business. It's very old-fashioned. Anybody who's an unstuffy knight definitely wouldn't use it in this day and age. The only time I have people going "Sir Richard" is actually in America. And I say, what is this Shakespearean play taking place?

And you did try but failed to buy the Concorde before it went under.
We couldn't get the Concorde so we've been working on a program that can go even farther with cleaner fuels. It could be the cleanest form of air travel there is. We're also trying to develop aircraft that will take you from L.A. to Australia in half and hour—literally whisk you up outside the Earth's atmosphere and down again. It's going to take a few years. With our space travel program, we are trying to come up with the Concorde of the future. Our space flights will leave from the Mojave Desert in California, and also New Mexico. We'll pop people up from L.A. into space.

With Virgin Galactic, can anyone with $200,000 and a pulse be launched into space?
There are basically no restrictions. You have to deal with some G-forces, but on this one it's not as bad as on a massive spaceship. We've got a number of 90-year-olds who've signed up to go, including James Lovelock, who's the greatest environmentalist alive today and wrote The Gaia Theory. I'm doing centrifuge training with him in December. Stephen Hawking has also signed up.

I'm assuming the nonagenarians will have to sign something to waive their rights to sue.
I'm sure in America you'll have to sign one. That's America.

You hot-air balloon and do all these adrenaline-junkie things. What's your kryptonite?
Most of these adventures, my stomach turns over before I do them. I've jumped out of planes and sky-dived, but bungee jumping was never something I've fancied. But on the TV show The Rebel Billionaire I had to jump over Victoria Falls, and my legs just didn't want to go over the edge. In the end, peer pressure made them go. I'm sure that when we go off into space in 15 months time my stomach will turn over for a few minutes before. We've got to go from naught to 3,500 miles in 10 seconds. It's going to be a rush. You wouldn't be human if you weren't a little nervous.

Virgin America and Beckham seem to be part of our '07 British Invasion. Is Becks part of your crew?
I'd be delighted to watch Beckham play [with the L.A. Galaxy]. It hasn't brought football alive in America the way everyone had hoped it would. But if he wants to become part of our crew, he's got a job tomorrow.

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