Space idea was child’s play reveals Branson

The Virgin boss told Jonathan Ross he first thought about it in 1988 on the BBC Saturday morning show Going Live when someone suggested it during a viewer phone-in.

Appearing on Ross’s ITV chat show, Sir Richard said: “You never know what sparks things off in your mind but as as 
result of that show we registered the name Virgin Galactic Airways.

“Over the next decade I started travelling around the world meeting technicians and engineers to see if we could find a genius who could build a spaceship that could take you and me into space.”

Sir Richard claimed that the idea was the “beginning of a whole new era of space travel” and admitted it was “the most ridiculously exciting thing that I’ve done in my lifetime”.

The multi-millionaire businessman added: “If we can get enough people wanting to fly it then we can start building Virgin hotels in space, we can start doing trips to Mars.”