Virgin Galactic VSS Unity Completes First Supersonic Rocket-Powered Flight “SpaceShipTwo VSS Unity has safely and successfully completed her first supersonic, rocket-powered flight. After two years of extensive ground and atmospheric testing, the passing of this milestone marks the start of the final portion of Unity’s flight test program. The flight was also significant for Virgin Galactic’s Mojave based, sister manufacturing organization, The Spaceship Company. Unity is the first vehicle to […]

Past Transit Tragedies Point to a Way Forward for Virgin Galactic, Smithsonian “Private spaceflight hit a large bump in the road to orbit last week, with Orbital Sciences’ rocket explosion followed days later by Virgin Galactic’s fatal spaceplane crash. But if early aviation and aerospace efforts can teach us anything, it’s that the key to surviving such tragedies is transparency and learning from any mistakes. And in a counterintuitive twist, […]

#SpaceShipTwo has experienced an in-flight anomaly. Additional info and statement forthcoming. — Virgin Galactic (@virgingalactic) October 31, 2014 Marc’s note: According to CNN, SpaceShipTwo’s engine started and ran for a few seconds but then stopped. It then restarted and exploded. One pilot managed to eject and use his parachute. The other apparently was not able to to eject and deploy his parachute. FAA Statement on SpaceShipTwo Incident “Just after 10 […]

Virgin Galactic Delays First Commercial Flights to 2015, Space News “… That timeline represents a delay from statements Branson made as recently as last month. In an interview with USA Today published Aug. 17, he said he expected to be on that first commercial flight by the end of this year. “I’ll be bitterly disappointed if I’m not into space by the end of the year,” he said. A Virgin […]

Virgin Galactic Conducts Successful Test Firings of LauncherOne Liquid Rocket Engine “As part of a rapid development program, Virgin Galactic has now hot-fired both a 3,500 lbf thrust rocket engine and a 47,500 lbf thrust rocket engine, called the “NewtonOne” and “NewtonTwo” respectively. Further, the NewtonOne engine has successfully completed a full-mission duty cycle on the test stand, firing for the five-minute duration expected of the upper stage engine on […]

Max Luke and Jenna Mukuno: Boldly Going Where No Greens Have Gone Before, Wall Street Journal “When you include the energy of the entire Virgin Galactic operation, which includes support aircraft, it is seven times more than the flight from Singapore to London. As such, a single trip on Virgin Galactic will require twice as much energy as the average American consumes each year. (These numbers were confirmed by a […]

Space science: Along for the ride, Nature “Three days after Discovery ‘s launch … two planetary scientists are talking with a group of fellow researchers about what should come next. Sipping his drink, Daniel Durda laments that after half a century, only about 500 people have flown in space. Access to humanity’s final frontier is still restricted to people employed by a handful of powerful governments and corporations, plus the […]

VSS Enterprise Completes First Manned Glide Flight “10th October 2010, Mojave, CA. Virgin Galactic, the US company developing the world’s first commercial manned space flight system and tourism business, is delighted to announce the successful completion today of the first piloted free flight of SpaceShipTwo, named the VSS Enterprise. The spaceship was released from its mothership at an altitude of 45,000 ft (13,700 metres). During its first flight the spaceship […]

First Captive Carry Flight for Virgin’s “Enterprise” “VSS Enterprise completes her first captive carry… Virgin Galactic announced today that VSS Enterprise has completed her inaugural captive carry flight from Mojave Air and Spaceport.” Branson spacecraft completes test flight, CNN “British billionaire Richard Branson’s dream of space travel that thousands of people can afford took a leap toward reality with the maiden flight of the world’s first commercial spacecraft over California’s […]