All the parties make shameless bids for Christmas coverage when the standards are lower, but the most absurd this year is a supposed bid by the SNP to get Richard Branson to fly his"spaceships" from Lossiemouth. I have to hand it to the Nats, purely in media terms. Space is always good box-office, and the bearded one has provided a massive archive of absurd promo shots. Angus Robertson is probably still sniggering about the word "serious" in his quote.
The whole thing is genius, except for the fact that it's as real as Scotty from Star Trek. There's the slight obstacle of having to get MoD permission, and they tend to object to everything that moves.
It also seems less likely that people will pay $20,000+ for up to six minutes of weightlessness nowadays. Even counting the getting there, that's a lot of money for a two and a half hour holiday. Ain't happening.
Thank god, too. As if the prospect of getting the very rich to fly here for brief stops in Trumptown was not financially unsound or unsustainable enough, do we really want to burn gargantuan amounts of fossil fuel getting rich nobodies into the lowest of low earth orbits?
The whole Virgin Galactic thing is all about Branson's self-promotion, his only true skill. To prove that, what would you do if you ran a real serious space programme and some pornographers wanted to shoot a film on your craft? Why, surely you'd have a press conference?
