I don't know if they read this or not, but Virgin Galactic appears to be taking money.

I got the following link in an email confirmed for all to see here.

Go quick. $20,000 refundable deposit only costs about $1200 in interest costs at today's money market rates. No word if the deposits are transferrable.

If you look at the recent press release about the X Prize Cup there's also a mention of a demonstration flight of the "Tier-1 X Prize Rocket Racer" in October 2005. Maybe this will also serve as some sort of test vehicle for the Virgin Galactic vehicle.

I hope it all works out for them- I really do.
Just a comment, though-
Some of us are old enough to remember Pan Am taking deposits for moon flights in the late '60's/early '70's.
So where are those moon flights?
Where is Pan Am?
...and I wonder where the money went?

Those of us who remember that misremember. No deposits were ever taken by Pan Am. They simply had a signup list, for publicity purposes.

I think the key difference between Pan Am's publicity stunt and what Branson is doing is that there is real hardware being built and a realistic short-term timetable for the first passengers to go into space.

Is there any research available that's been done about treatment of hypertension in low atmospheric pressure environment. Or possibly records of blood pressure over lengthy periods in orbit contrasted to the same person(s) at sea level? Just idle curiousity at the moment but so far I've come up with bupkis, great steaming mounds of bupkis.