Never one to miss a marketing opportunity, Virgin Atlantic boss Richard Branson neatly got in his press conference announcing Virgin space flight services ahead of the imminent X-Prize attempt by Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne. Virgin Galactic will, apparently, offer a branded version of the SpaceShipOne experience to consumers with a spare £100,000 or so to spend on going 100km straight up and straight down again. But why Virgin Galactic? After all, 100km is not exactly a galactic distance. Perhaps because the new publicity-grabbing brand had to resonate with the highly profitable real-world business that is Virgin Atlantic - the "tic" at the end of Galactic no doubt being the part that was seized on by marketers. A more accurate name, given the short-burn, sub-orbital flight characteristics of the SpaceShipOne rocket, would have been Virgin Ballistic. But perhaps it would be bad to remind wealthy customers that they are paying to be strapped into something with more than a passing resemblance to a ballistic missile...