The first Ugandan in outer space

However, SpaceShipTwo will undergo a year’s worth of test flights before it is deemed safe for tourist flights.

Of course, the flight will not come cheap — the quick jaunt just beyond the earth’s atmosphere and into zero gravity weightlessness will cost the space tourists a cool $200,000 each.

But, “Nothing is more expensive than a missed opportunity. This is the opportunity of a lifetime,” says Thakkar, chief executive officer of the Mara Group.

His fellow spacefarers include actors, real estate magnates, CEOs and rich adventurers who can afford the fee.

Among them are actress and skin-care entrepreneur Victoria Principal, Hollywood film director Brian Singer and Soviet emige Lina Borozdina-Birch, who took a second mortgage of her house just to be on the trip.

Also booked are the husband and wife team of George and Loretta Whitesides, who want to spend their honeymoon on a space vehicle.

Thakkar and his group have undergone a series of tests and weightlessness exercises to prepare them for the conditions aboard the space vehicle during the flight.

In November last year, they completed a space flight training course at the National Aerospace Training and Research Centre (NASTAR) in Philadelphia.

“The training was an amazing experience,” said Thakkar. The flight simulation exercise were combined with sessions in the STS-400 centrifuge, which simulates the crushing G forces acting on the body during lift off: “I felt like I was really launching into space.”

Training at the Centre is an integral part of Virgin Galactic’s spaceflight programme, because during a flight, passengers will experience the same physiological stresses as professional astronauts, including elevated, sustained Gs.

Gs are a multiple of the normal effect of gravity on the human body.

For example, 3.5 Gs is three and a half times the normal weight a person feels while at rest on Earth, and is the force spacecraft passengers will feel on launch. They will experience 6 Gs on re-entry.

According to Thakkar, the wannabe astronaurts not only became accustomed to these stresses, for most people these effects, while intense, proved not only survivable but even enjoyable. Most of the participants laughed or whooped during their space launch simulation.

Each passenger will have a fully documented record of the whole trip and of course their astronaut wings.

So far, Virgin Galactic has recruited around 200 people to be part of its inaugural flight, which will blast off from the Mojave Desert Spaceport in California.