The last seat on a flight into space on Abu Dhabi’s part-owned Virgin Galactic with Hollywood film star Leonardo DiCaprio has been sold for US$1 million at an auction.
The seat was sold to an unnammed bidder at this year’s amfAR Cinema Against Aids Gala held at the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc, close to Cannes in the south of France.
Tickets for those who have to pay for themselves usually cost $250,000. Other passengers believed to have signed up for a ride on SpaceShipTwo when it launches in 2015 include Brad Pitt, Tom Hanks and Justin Timberlake.
Last month Virgin Galactic and the UAE’s Aabar Investments, which owns 37.8 per cent of the space travel company, teamed up to put an Emirati into space via a competition.
Sir Richard Branson, the founder of the Virgin group, is hoping to build a spaceport in Abu Dhabi in the next two years.
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