>
Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic announced Thursday that the first space tourists will launch on August 10.
Called Galactic 02, the mission will see three customers who paid the original $250,000 or $450,000, an increase that was made this year.
The crew, as yet unnamed, will be packed into the company’s spaceplane attached to the underbelly of a larger aircraft carrier and flown to space.
Once the pair reaches at least 45,000 feet, the rocket plane will separate and fly more than 50 miles above the Earth’s surface.
Virgin Galactic has already booked a backlog of 800 customers vying for their chance to go to space, made possible by the company’s inaugural mission in June.
Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic announced Thursday that the first space tourists will launch August 10 (stock)
Branson’s company said it will release the flight manifest, including crew and pilots, at a later date and live stream the launch.
A three-man crew from its first mission ‘Galactic-01’ made the short suborbital ride, which marked a long-delayed breakthrough for the company, finally into commercial service after nearly 20 years fraught with development setbacks.
The 90-minute mission took off from Spaceport America in New Mexico around 8:30 a.m. local time.
And August’s mission will be carried out in the same way.
The rocket plane, known as Unity, will be attached to the ‘mothership’, an aircraft carrier named VMS Eve.
Eve is a kind of aircraft carrier and will take Unity far above the surface of the earth to release it.
Unity will then ignite and disable its thruster once it reaches space.
At the apex of the flight, the spaceplane is expected to open its wings and soar above our planet’s atmosphere, allowing the crew to experience weightlessness and epic views of the final frontier for a few minutes.
The focus of the Galactic 01 mission was to test 13 experiments in zero gravity, collecting biometric data, measuring cognitive performance and recording how certain liquids and solids mix in microgravity conditions.
The rocket plane, known as Unity, will be attached to the ‘mothership’, an aircraft carrier named VMS Eve. Eve is a kind of aircraft carrier and will take Unity far above the surface of the earth to release it. Unity will then ignite and disable its thruster once it reaches space.
Three Italian researchers were present at the inaugural flight on June 29
And the three Italian researchers who were passengers did not pay for their seats.
However, Galactic 02 will all be paying customers.
Musk’s SpaceX and Bezos’ Blue Origin use rockets to launch capsules into space, while Branson chose to take a different approach with airborne launches.
Branson’s technique has been explored over decades of flight research, including the X-1, the first aircraft to break the sound barrier, and the X-15, the fastest piloted aircraft ever flown, reaching a top speed of 4,520 miles per hour during a 1967 flight.
And it reduces the need for massive amounts of fuel because the craft doesn’t use the rocket’s power to crawl through the dense lower atmosphere.
Branson became the first billionaire in space when he made the maiden voyage of the VSS Unity on July 11, 2021.
The founder of Virgin Galactic was one of six Virgin Galactic employees aboard VSS Unity.
Inside the spaceplane is a minimalist design with seats and windows to enjoy the astonishing view of space
Branson became the first billionaire in space when he made the maiden voyage of the VSS Unity on July 11, 2021
However, the spaceplane was grounded shortly after the flight due to an investigation when it went off course during its descent back to the runway in the New Mexico desert.
Branson became the first billionaire in space when he made the maiden voyage of the VSS Unity on July 11, 2021.
The founder of Virgin Galactic was one of six Virgin Galactic employees aboard VSS Unity.
However, the spaceplane was grounded shortly after the flight due to an investigation when it went off course during its descent back to the runway in the New Mexico desert.
In September 2021, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said it was investigating an anomaly in the flight’s descent.
The FAA, which oversees commercial air and spaceflight in the US, found that the spaceplane “deviated from air traffic control clearance” and did so for about a minute and 41 seconds.