LATER THAT DAY, in a tricked-out Virgin trailer parked behind the festival, Richard Branson sips Gatorade on an electric-blue couch and talks about the topic that really lights his eyes. Over the past year he has made it clear that Virgin will be a major player, possibly the major player, in the private conquest of space, and he's outlining his ideas for the ultimate untapped market. Even now, Branson says that rocket scientists are out in the Mojave Desert putting the finishing touches on a spaceship prototype designed by aviation legend Burt Rutan. Branson wants to be the first to offer well-heeled travelers the chance to experience the rarefied frisson of weightlessness, charging $200,000 a seat to slingshot passengers into low Earth orbit and glide them safely back down.

"With space," Branson says, "there are significant challenges ahead, enough for the next few generations at least. Our first goal, our immediate goal, is to build a reliable spacecraft that provides our customers with a guaranteed return ticket."

Right now, that is far from guaranteed. Earlier this summer, three employees were killed in an explosion while working on the SpaceShipTwo project at the lab in the Mojave Desert. "It was terrible," Branson says of the disaster, "but not a show-stopper. Our investigations suggest the problem was not in the design itself." The accident, in addition to the recent loss of his friend and fellow adventurer Steve Fossett, is yet another reminder that exploration of any kind involves serious risk. "I daresay we'll never see anyone like him again on this earth," Branson says of Fossett. "It's my greatest hope that in ten years' time he'll write me a lovely letter from some beautiful place in South America." Despite all this, the ever-sanguine Branson insists that Virgin Galactic will be unveiling its first viable spaceship sometime in the spring (and that the mother ship will be renamed The Spirit of Steve Fossett).

Of course, merely puncturing the thermosphere is only the beginning, Branson says. As with nearly all his businesses, he believes in jumping in now and asking questions later. "I like to keep a David-vs.-Goliath stance and shake up complacent, tired old industries," he says. Only in this case, the "industry" is NASA and other bloated, hidebound national space programs. In the not-too-distant future, Branson envisions private space stations, colonies on other planets, and—why not?—maybe even rock concerts on the moons of Jupiter.

"We're at the birth of an enormously exciting new era," Branson says. "Instead of being citizens of a country, we'll just be earthlings, with citizen-of-the-world passports."

And when the first Virgin Galactic voyager leaves the spaceport, Citizen Branson plans to be on board, with his fair-haired Sam beside him—going anywhere, as long as it's up.