Spacemiles

It was only a matter of time.

"Move Over, Buzz Lightywar: Virgin Atlantic offers its frequent flyer members 'space miles'"

Frequent flyers are being offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to become an astronaut under a newly launched scheme by Virgin Atlantic.

Members of its Flying Club loyalty programme can now convert their earthly miles into 'space miles' and earn themselves a trip beyond the upper atmosphere to join the 100-Mile High Club.

Members will need to earn two million miles on Virgin flights to be able to redeem them for a trip with Virgin Galactic into space. The adventure includes the three-day Virgin Galactic Experience, which will ensure that future astronauts can savour each second of their space flight. It will include 'g' acclimatisation, a flight in the White Knight spacecraft, and will take place in the US at the Virgin Galactic Spaceport. To date, there have been only 444 astronauts, but with the launch of commercial flights, the figure is expected to grow to many thousands.

Initially, flights will cost $200,000 per person but Virgin Galactic expects prices to fall over time.

All I want to know now is: (a) Can you move miles over from other airlines? (b) If not, when will Continental or Swiss take on Virgin as a codeshare partner? :)

Some changes over at the CafePress end of things

For those who might be interested, we're in the middle of restructuring the Young Wizards CafePress store. Things are getting moved around, old designs are getting spruced up or dumped, and a lot of new designs are being installed to take advantage of the much wider range of products available since the store opened up in '03.

Just added: a couple of T-shirts that appear in Wizard's Holiday and Wizards at War -- Roshaun's "Fermilab" T-shirt and Sker'ret's "Will Do Magic For Food" shirt. Also, there's an entire section devoted to various sorts of Wizard's Oath material, which people have repeatedly been asking for.

(Also: CafePress is just now rolling out its API. As soon as I can figure out how, I'll install an RSS-fed box on OOA so those interested in such things can see what's new in the store without blog posts being required.)