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Virgin Galactic to fly customers to edge of space at up to $450,000 per ticket
Virgin Galactic flies customers to edge of space at up to $450,000 per ticket
(about 4 hours later)
First flight marks a key moment for space tourism venture founded by British billionaire Richard Branson, following years of setbacks
First flight marks a key moment for space tourism venture founded by British billionaire Richard Branson, following years of setbacks
A twin-fuselage jet stood ready on Thursday to carry a Virgin Galactic rocket plane with a three-man crew from Italy into the New Mexico sky for a high-altitude launch of the company’s first flight of paying customers to the edge of space.
Sir Richard Branson officially entered the billionaire space tourism race on Thursday when his Virgin Galactic rocket plane, Unity, reached an altitude of about 53 miles.
The two Italian air force colonels and an aerospace engineer from the National Research Council of Italy were due to join their Virgin Galactic instructor and the spaceplane’s two pilots on a suborbital ride expected to take the six men about 50 miles (80 km) above the desert floor.
Two Italian air force colonels and an aerospace engineer from the National Research Council of Italy joined a Virgin Galactic instructor and the plane’s two pilots on the 90 minute suborbital ride, which was streamed around the world.
The flight marks a decisive moment for Virgin Galactic Holding Inc, the space tourism venture founded by British billionaire Richard Branson in 2004, as it inaugurates commercial service following several years fraught with development setbacks.
Welcome back to Earth, #Galactic01! Our pilots, crew and spaceship have landed smoothly at @Spaceport_NM. pic.twitter.com/f8YQowQN2x
Virgin becomes the latest commercial enterprise, along with Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin and fellow billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX, catering to wealthy customers willing to pay large sums of money to experience the exhilaration of supersonic rocket speed, microgravity and the spectacle of the Earth’s curvature from space.
At the apex of the flight, the crew experienced a few minutes of weightlessness and unfurled an Italian flag before the craft shifted into re-entry mode and glided back to the runway at Spaceport America near El Paso.
The mission of the Italian team flying on Thursday, however, was billed as a scientific one, with the three men planning to collect biometric data, measure cognitive performance and record how certain liquids and solids mix in microgravity conditions.
“Welcome to space, astronauts,” Sirisha Bandla, Virgin Galactic’s vice president of government affairs and research operations, said during the live stream of the launch. The US Space Agency NASA and the US Air Force both define an astronaut as anyone who has flown 80 km (50 miles) high or more.
For Italian air force Col Walter Villadei, designated as commander, the flight aboard the spaceplane, dubbed VSS Unity, is also part of his astronaut training for a future mission to the International Space Station.
Virgin Galactic tweeted: “Welcome back to Earth, #Galactic01! Our pilots, crew and spaceship have landed smoothly at @Spaceport_NM.”
The gleaming white rocket plane was to be borne aloft at around 11am EDT (15:00 GMT) attached to the underside of its transport jet, VMS Eve, as the carrier plane takes off from Spaceport America near the New Mexico town of Truth or Consequences.
The flight marks a decisive moment for Virgin Galactic Holding Inc, the space tourism venture founded by Branson in 2004, as it inaugurates commercial service following several years fraught with development setbacks. It was the company’s sixth piloted sub-orbital space flight but the first to carry paying customers.
Unity is designed to separate from its dual-fuselage mothership at an altitude of about 50,000 feet (9.5 miles/15.24 km), then fall away as the pilots ignite the vehicle’s engine to send the rocket plane streaking in a near-vertical climb at about three times the speed of sound to the blackness of space some 50-55 miles (80-89 km) high.
Branson’s company has sold about 800 tickets for trips on the aircraft at a cost of up to $450,000 per seat. The company planes to eventually building a large enough fleet to accommodate 400 flights annually.
At the apex of the flight, the crew will experience a few minutes of weightlessness with the engine shut off before the craft shifts into re-entry mode and glides back to the spaceport for a runway landing. The entire flight, from takeoff to touchdown, should take no more than about 90 minutes.
Virgin is the latest billionaire-founded company to join the space tourism race, along with Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
The flight comes two years after Branson himself rode along with five other Virgin Galactic personnel for the first fully crewed test spaceflight of Unity in July 2021. At the time, the company was targeting regular commercial service to begin in 2022 following additional test flights.
The potentially dangerous trip comes just days after the loss of the Titan submersible, which was slated to take wealthy customers to see the Titanic at the bottom on the ocean. These extreme trips are part of a growing trend for billionaires to spend vast sums on extreme expeditions.
But completion of the test program took longer than anticipated after federal regulators grounded Unity for 11 weeks while the company was under investigation for deviating from its assigned airspace on ascent during the July 2021 flight. A final crewed test flight to space was conducted with little fanfare five weeks ago.
The flight also comes two years after Branson himself rode along with five other Virgin Galactic personnel for the first fully crewed test spaceflight of Unity in July 2021. At the time, the company was targeting regular commercial service to begin in 2022 following additional test flights.
Thursday’s flight profile was expected to largely follow the sequence of events when Unity flew two years ago and again in May. If all goes smoothly, Unity will fly again in early August, with monthly flights thereafter, the company said.
The mission of the Italian team was billed as a scientific one, with the three men planning to collect biometric data, measure cognitive performance and record how certain liquids and solids mix in microgravity conditions.
Virgin Galactic has said it has already booked a backlog of some 800 customers, charging from $250,000 to $450,000 per seat, and envisions eventually building a large enough fleet to accommodate 400 flights annually.
One of the astronauts wore a special suit that measured biometric data and physiological responses. Another conducted tests using sensors to track heart rate, brain function and other metrics while in microgravity. A third experiment assessed how certain liquids and solids mix in that environment.
How high one goes to experience what is considered true spaceflight may also factor into the equation.
“This flight showcases our distinctive spaceflight system, which allows researchers to fly with their experiments, and our capacity to offer regular access to space for the science and technology community,” Bandla said.
Bezos, whose astro-tourist venture Blue Origin has already flown several commercial passenger flights, has disparaged Virgin as falling short of the mark.
In 2014, a pilot was killed when Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo craft crashed in the California desert.
Unlike Unity, Bezos has said, Blue Origin’s suborbital New Shepard rocketship tops the 62-mile-high-mark (100 km), called the Karman line, set by an international aeronautics body as defining the boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and space.
Nasa and the US Air Force both define an astronaut as anyone who has flown 50 miles (80 km) high or more.
