"The Right Stuff” was on TV the other night, and I watched with fascination as the bravest and fittest American pilots prepared to be the first humans to go to space. While engineers built the first space vehicles, scientists attempted to anticipate the impact of space travel on the human body and put the early astronauts through gruelling physical tests.

A lot has happened in human space flight in the past half-century, although probably much less than most people would have expected. True, more than 500 astronauts have travelled to space and 12 have walked on the Moon. But the overwhelming majority have been government-employed and specially selected. Other than Mike Melville and Brian Binnie, who flew the prototype Virgin Galactic vehicle, the handful of private citizens who have travelled to space have done so as paying guests of governments. Apart from facing a ticket price in the tens of millions of dollars, they have needed to be in excellent health, endure rigorous training and even brush up on their Russian. I considered taking one of those flights myself a few years back and decided, all things considered, that I would rather build my own spaceship.

In time, we will launch missions to Mars and beyond

Partly due to that rash decision we are standing today at the dawn of a new space age, which will transform the human relationship with the world outside our world. Within just a few months we will see the overdue emergence of the private astronaut. To join that group you will not need a Harvard degree or years of training. That’s wonderful news for the millions of individuals of different abilities, ages and nationalities who dream of seeing their home planet from the blackness and silence of space.

As an entrepreneur, I have seen many examples of technologies that are brought into existence by governments but show their true potential only when unlocked to the private sector. Progress in human space flight has been sluggish precisely because the world’s most powerful governments have wanted to keep it for themselves. Now, Virgin Galactic is on track to be the world’s first commercial spaceline. Already many more people have paid and signed up to travel to space with us than have actually been to space in history. My children Holly and Sam and I are getting our minds round the fact that we will be on the inaugural commercial flight in 2014.

Our mission is to transform access to space for the benefit of life on Earth. To achieve that, more than 300 talented men and women have moved their lives and families to the Mojave desert in California to manufacture and operate our spaceships. Out there they are starting something more significant than any of us can understand right now.

Our experience in building and operating winged space vehicles will give us an advantage in being able to push long-haul commercial aviation above the atmosphere. In due course we will drastically reduce journey times and the environmental impact of moving people around the planet, delivering a transcontinental capability for our vehicles and leapfrogging the long-awaited supersonic successors to Concorde.

Then there’s LauncherOne, a satellite-launch vehicle, which will take new, smart technologies to space. Before long we expect to be able to launch as many as 100 small satellites in a 24-hour period. Space will start to be a centre of solar power generation and asteroid mining. Our technology will also enable improved climate monitoring, more effective disaster management and more efficient transport of food. One day we may even launch giant mirrors to reduce solar radiation on Earth, offsetting some of the effects of climate change.

Using our second-generation payload vehicles we will eventually build space science labs and hotels, providing the capability for missions beyond the orbit of Earth. Our space-hotel guests will be able to take breathtaking excursions, flying a couple of hundred feet above the Moon’s surface in small two-man spaceships. In time, we will launch missions to Mars and beyond.

Virgin territory

But first, back to 2014. Virgin Galactic’s first SpaceShipTwo commercial flights will make history and provide clear proof of concept. We will show that it is possible for a private firm to give thousands of people the full astronaut experience, safely and within a commercially viable framework.

This new industry will define the 21st century in the way that commercial aviation defined the century before. The first short, faltering flight by the Wright brothers took place in 1903. Only 24 years later Charles Lindbergh flew solo across the Atlantic. Like the jet age before it, the new space age will bring enormous economic and cultural benefits. It is our aim that Virgin Galactic will be at the forefront of that transformation.