"They [celebrities] would be the pioneers, and in time the price will come down and down, and down so that I think in your lifetime space travel could be nearly as common place as traveling to another continent," says Branson.

While he has been known to give out airplane tickets for his Virgin airlines, Branson says that celebrities will not be getting free rides to space.

The mogul says he gets a lot of "celebrities who ring up and say 'Could we have a freebie? Could we have an upgrade' [but] they will pay the same as everybody else."

Branson assured us that the space program is not part of a cunning plan to fill a plane with celebrities and banish them to space, but he says that he wouldn't mind giving one celebrity a one-way ticket to space.

Stephen Colbert, you've been warned.