Banker Tong Jingjing In Line For A Seat Aboard An XCOR Lynx Spacecraft

A 41-year-old female Chinese banker has put down a $100,000 deposit for a seat aboard an XCOR Lynx flight at some point in the future, making her China's first potential space tourist.

NBC News reports that Tong Jingjing said that the money means nothing compared to the experience of flying to the fringe of space.

Tong is one of a very few Chinese citizens to have paid for a suborbital spaceflight experience. The cost for the flight is about what an average Chinese worker might earn in 15 years.

While other companies have not sold seats in China, XCOR says that it believes that U.S. export regulations do not prohibit such sales. "We believe that the participant experience is not a licensable event under export control rules," the company's president, Andrew Nelson, told NBC News.

XCOR's timeline calls for the first Lynx spacecraft to fly to an altitude of 37 miles by next year or 2016, with a Mark II version of the spacecraft achieving the 65-mile space boundary 12 to 18 months later.

(Image from file)

FMI: www.xcor.com