A Singaporean businessman, his wife and two children have paid $1 million to become the first Asian family to fly together on space-tourism airline Virgin Galactic.

“I had lunch yesterday with a guy who got in touch with us in Singapore, and over lunch he signed his contract for not just a seat, but for a whole flight,” Virgin Galactic commercial director Stephen Attenborough said.

Attenborough said the customer handed over a cheque for $1 million and asked to remain anonymous because “apparently he hasn’t told his wife yet.”

Richard Branson on Monday opened the world’s first-ever commercial spaceport in the New Mexico desert, the new home for his company, Virgin Galactic.

The eccentric businessman inaugurated the building by breaking a champagne bottle against a hanger building, while rappelling down the side of it.

“Spaceport America” awill serve “as the operating hub for Virgin Galactic and is expected to house up to two WhiteKnightTwos and five SpaceShipTwos, in addition to all of Virgins astronaut preparation facilities and mission control.”

British business magnate Richard Branson hopes to launch a vessel into space within the next 12 months, kicking off an era of commercial space travel.

“The mother ship is finished… The rocket tests are going extremely well, and so I think that we’re now on track for a launch within 12 months of today.”

“This could be the beginning of a whole new era of space travel, which will be commercial space travel,” he told CNN’s Piers Morgan late Wednesday.

Tours of the world’s first space port, which is situated in the state of New Mexico, are to begin this week, it has been confirmed.

Spaceport America will open its doors to the public for three-hour tours from May 13, giving visitors an insight into the space flight facility.

The port is currently set to be the launch pad for Virgin Galactic as of 2013, when Richard Branson’s attempt to take tourists into space is expected to blast off.

Virgin Galactic, Richard Branson‘s company that hopes to be taking tourists into space within a couple of years, has shown the inside of its spacecraft to the media for the first time.

A BBC journalist was this week given an exclusive look inside the vessel, which is designed to propel six tourists and two pilots through the atmosphere and over 100 kilometers above the Earth.

While the inside looks rather cramped, the first “space tourists” will be able to get a good view thanks to the large porthole-shaped windows on each side, and entry is through a narrow hatch on the bottom side of the vessel.

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.