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Space will be the final frontier for tourists if Sir Richard Branson has his way.


Getting there won't be easy on the wallet - but it won't be so hard on the planet, either, contends the British adventurer and Virgin Group founder, who touched down at Washington's National Press Club recently.


"Very environmentally friendly," Branson said, according to a Greenwire report (subscription required). "The [carbon] cost of us putting someone into space will be less than flying to London and back on a commercial plane."


Five years and $150 million into his Virgin Galactic venture, Branson has a bona fide spaceship to show for it.


Over the past few months, pilots have conducted several test flights of the space-launch vehicle Eve, a model of which is pictured here with Branson. The mother ship is designed to ferry SpaceShipTwo and its two pilots and six astronauts more than 50,000 feet above the Earth's surface.


From the stratosphere, SpaceShipTwo would blast to a sub-orbital altitude of about 360,000 feet using hybrid rockets.


A "whole new era of space travel" may be nigh, boasted Branson, who plans to go boldly where just a few tourists have gone before. SpaceShipTwo is slated for completion by the end of the year, he said, followed by about 18 months of testing. A ticket to ride is $200,000.


Eve's jet engines will run on kerosene initially but are also capable of running on butanol, a biofuel that can be made from algae. SpaceShipTwo's rockets will burn nitrous oxide - but only briefly - as the spaceship would require no fuel for takeoff, re-entry and landing.


Carbon-dioxide emissions per passenger on a Virgin Galactic spaceflight would be about 60 percent of a passenger's carbon footprint on a round-trip flight between New York and London. About 70 percent of a spaceflight's CO2 emissions would come from mother ship Eve, which must carry SpaceShipTwo into the stratosphere.

Tags: Alternative Fuels, Biofuels, Butanol, Emissions, Alternative Fuels, Biofuels, Carbon Dioxide, Carbon Emissions, Carbon Footprint, Emissions, Sir Richard Branson

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Branson's Virgin Galactic Venture Promises Space Flights Powered by Biofuels was originally published by Green Car Advisor. Read the full story by clicking here.