KLM has laid down the gauntlet to Virgin by announcing that it too will offer sub-orbital flights to its customers.

The Dutch flag-carrier said November 17 that it will support Space Experience Curacao by allowing members of its frequent flyer program Flying Blue to redeem points for space flights, as well as including it in future KLM vacation packages.

The deal will also see KLM marketing and selling flights operated by Space Experience Curacao, which use a Lynx suborbital spacecraft.

The world’s first commercial passenger spaceship moved a step closer to takeoff, as Richard Branson unveiled a new runway at a remote New Mexico spaceport.

Branson and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson on Friday hosted a ceremony marking the completion of the main runway at Spaceport America, near the town of Las Cruces where the Virgin Galactic project is based.

“This is the beginning of the second space age and we are proud to have been supporters of this part of the story.

“From here we will see, perhaps daily flights into space, but also scientists, explorers of new opportunities beyond our planet,” he told reporters.

The world’s first commercial spaceship made its first manned free flight over California Sunday and successfully landed at Mojave Air and Space Port.

Virgin Galactic, the US company developing the world’s first commercial manned space flight system and tourism business, announced the successful completion of the first piloted free flight of SpaceShipTwo, named the VSS Enterprise.

The spaceship was released from its mothership, the four-engined aircraft dubbed Eve, at an altitude of 45,000 ft (13,700 metres), the company said.

A Russian company plans to launch a comfortable space hotel for tourists who up to now have shared cramped accommodation with astronauts.

The company, Orbital Technologies, plans to launch the first module of the hotel in 2015-16, its chief executive Sergei Kostenko told RIA Novosti news agency.

A cosy fit, the first module will measure just 20 cubic metres (706 cubic feet) and have four cabins, designed for up to seven passengers, who would go into orbit using the Soyuz shuttle, Kostenko said.

Up to now space tourists, who have included the Canadian founder of the Cirque du Soleil, Guy Laliberte, have squeezed into the International Space Station (ISS) along with cosmonauts and animal life including fruit flies.

Richard Branson said Monday that Virgin Galactic is on track to offer commercial space travel within 18 months. Space hotels are next on the drawing board.

The project’s SpaceshipTwo, an aircraft built by aviation engineer Burt Rutan and designed to carry paying customers into suborbital space, had its maiden flight in the California desert in March.

“We just finished building SpaceShipTwo. We are 18 months away from taking people into space,” Branson told a business conference in Kuala Lumpur, adding that the fare will start at 200,000 dollars.

US aerospace giant Boeing has forged an alliance with marketing firm Space Adventure to put tourists into low-level orbit in a futuristic capsule by early 2015.