I'm very much looking forward to presenting to the CIMA World Conference today and hope to cover a variety of issues relating to the Virgin Galactic project. Space is definitely the new frontier of business and that is pretty clear to those of us working in it every day, but for many it's a brand new concept that is a bit too 'Star Trek' to be believable.

I hope to be able to convey to the conference that this is not the stuff of science fiction, that we are actually doing this and are in fact quite a long way through our project. I'll be talking about why Virgin chose to go embark on our most difficult venture yet, the technology we are using and where we are at with the project right now.

Another key point is that this isn’t just about space tourism. We hope to use our system for a variety of applications such as science & research as well as offering a much cheaper and cleaner option for getting people and payload into space.

This widens the options for business opportunities a great deal, particularly if we can prove to the world what we already know; that commercial space can be a very profitable line of business to be in.

That way we hope that the industry will attract a wall of private sector money to invest in the many fabulous ideas out there for new technologies for space access, thus creating a large and vibrant new industry.  

Space has already proven its importance to us in terms of communications and weather prediction.  Many people, such as Professor Stephen Hawking, believe that space is going to prove vital in the future whether that be for futuristic ideas such as the possible need to colonise other planets in the future because ours will be unable to sustain us or the more pressing issues of finding more effective ways to power our planet such as Space Based Solar Power.

In any case it’s a lot for business today to be thinking about and in 30-minutes I’m not sure I can cover everything I’d like to but at the very least I hope it generates some interesting discussion!

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Carolyn is Head of Astronaut Sales for Virgin Galactic, UK