Virgin Galactic Completes First Fully Crewed Spaceflight
Virgin Galactic Successfully Completes First Fully Crewed Spaceflight, Virgin Galactic
“Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc. today announced that VSS Unity successfully reached space, completing the Company’s fourth rocket-powered spaceflight. Today’s flight was the 22nd test flight of VSS Unity and the first test flight with a full crew in the cabin, including the Company’s founder, Sir Richard Branson. The crew fulfilled a number of test objectives related to the cabin and customer experience, including evaluating the commercial customer cabin, the views of Earth from space, the conditions for conducting research and the effectiveness of the five-day pre-flight training program at Spaceport America.”
Omaze and Sir Richard Branson to Make History by Sending Two People to Space Aboard A Virgin Galactic Flight, Omaze
“Today, Omaze, the charity fundraising platform that offers the chance to win once-in-a-lifetime experiences and prizes, and Sir Richard Branson, Virgin Galactic Founder, announced they will give away two seats on a Virgin Galactic commercial flight. The Omaze sweepstakes will support Space for Humanity, a nonprofit seeking to democratize space and send citizen astronauts of diverse racial, economic, and disciplinary backgrounds to space.”
The amount of hatred piled upon Branson on Twitter by bot and verified accounts is comparable to a public stoning. I don’t care how rich the man is he’s opening space travel to the masses.
I wasn’t aware the masses could afford $250,000 plane tickets. Virgin Galactic’s vehicle is pretty much a technological dead end. There are no real prospects for the design evolving into anything more capable or lower cost.
Yeah, you’re right. Branson may as well send Unity to the scrap yard and never bother again(!)
There has been talk in the past of suborbital point to point earth travel as evolution of the architecture
Point to point for long distance travel requires near orbital velocity which is not going to happen with this architecture. Shorter runs like say LA to Vegas or New York to DC would in theory be possible depending on what the horizontal distance capability is (X-15 could travel over 300 miles). But including the time that it takes to climb to 45,000 feet and reach the launch point there would be virtually no time savings over a one-hour subsonic airplane flight. So at best these would just be modified versions of tourist flights.
I think it is a good architecture for what it is doing right now. It provides a unique experience that I think some people will prefer over riding in a capsule. If it can do it at a lower price than New Shepard that will be an advantage also. If they can get a decent flight rate going it has the potential to carry a fairly large number of people into space over the next several years, and that really was the only goal of this project.
depends if it does high altitude skips off the atmo to extend it’s range but yeah giving more people the overview effect is the main impact.
High altitude skips off the atmosphere is pretty complicated and needs a lot of real time data on atmospheric conditions at those altitudes in order to have the precision needed. Sounds like an interesting X plane project, but not something for space tourism at least not for the foreseeable future.
Trying to imagine a craft loaded with civilians initiating ‘high altitude skips’.
Is this not a risky, and undependable, procedure?
The price today will not be the price tomorrow.
Virgin Galactic has no ability to improve the performance of the their vehicles. They are using dead end technology. They can’t make the carrier aircraft much bigger, and they can’t make the suborbital plane significantly more capable. So the future price for a seat on one of their flights will not be too different from the current price.
Technical advances are often high-priced at the start and, therefore, accessible to only a limited audience. This is nothing new. Pushing the boundaries of the possible has value and increases access for everyone.
By demonstrating the capability and making a profit at it, they’ll draw other providers into the market that will increase supply and lower cost. I don’t care at all who rides on v1 and what it’s used for. I’m interested in v10, but we can’t get there without going through v1.
Let me try again. Virgin Galactic’s StarShipTwo is a technological dead end. There isn’t any real potential for a v2, let alone a v10.
Apparently, Elon is interested in a Virgin flight
https://www.businessinsider…
All times are CT (US)
Or Mr. Musk was once interested. Virgin has been taking down payments for flights for years. Actually, over a decade, if memory serves. Based on the claims, Mr. Musk could have booked a flight with Virgin a decade ago. We have no evidence that he is still interested in paying for or participating in a Virgin Galactic flight.
Indeed, it is now reported to date back to 2006.
It will be interesting to see if he still wishes to follow through.
https://www.forbes.com/site…
Woo. But, ehh: If from a given altitude it is not possible to complete a circular orbit, it’s not really space. 50 miles up gives a nice view, but it’s not high enough.
Define “space” – not just distance but overall characteristics and get back to me.
Will take Jonthan MacDowell’s definition of where space begins. He submitted a paper of his Karman line proposal at arXiv.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1807….
News flash. The flights happen from/to within/above the U.S. and NASA, FAA, and DoD say that you are an astronaut if you go above 50 miles. SO there you go. Next question.
Right on, Keith. This is entire a nomenclature issue, not unlike the Pluto squabble.
Perhaps we are talking about a feeling, better defined by a poet.