A major step towards commercial space travel has been heralded this week as Richard Branson announced a deal launching The Spaceship Company .  This is a joint deal with aviation expert, Burt Rutan who famously won the Ansari X prize last year by building the first private craft to vacate the earth's atmosphere and netting him a cool £5.6m. Branson has put in an order for 5 SpaceShipTwo craft that will realise the dreams of some 28,000 lunatics who want to blow £115,000 on a two hour s crape with death and five minutes of weightlessness. I hear the view is nice though. Virgin Galactic hopes to have the enterprise up and running in about two years time ferrying up to 7 passengers on each trip. [co-published with TechDigest]