Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo - image courtesy Virgin Galactic
Five Years after SpaceShipOne and Virgin Galactic was formed as a company, Virgin Galactic rolled out SpaceShipTwo day before yesterday – billed as the world’s first commercial Spaceline! What an achievement! I applaud the vision and execution of Sir Richard Branson to propagate Consumer Travel into Space – and boy, does he do it with style! See the rendition for his Spaceport below – completely love the design and how it has been conceived.
The Virgin Spaceport under construction in Southern New Mexico
We have recently read about rich billionaires paying ridiculous sums of money to piggyback on Russian Space programs and travel into space during the last few years. Given how expensive it is for space travel, the prospect for consumers to travel into space remained a distant dream. All of that is now shattered with the possibilities that Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo offers – affordability (on relative terms) and a consumer friendy (to the extent possible) experience that can only be offered by a brand such as Virgin.
How it Works
The concept is really simple – in an awe inspiring way. Build one space module (SpaceShipTwo) with the ability and characteristics to renter Earth’s atmosphere, attach it to a mothership (WhiteKnightTwo) to carry it to a high altitude of 50,000ft, release the Space Module (SpaceShipTwo) and fire the rocket till you are in Space! The picture below explains it in a very simple manner.
A unique Wing Feathering design inspired by a shuttle cock allows the SpaceShipTwo to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere without having computer or manual guidance. Incredible!
Wing Feathering for Re-entry was inspired by the Shuttlecock
Sure, Space Tourism will be very much doable for our grandkids or at least that’s what I thought. How naive of me. This is happening in my life time! I for one cannot contain my glee. The possibilities offered by affordable, safe Space Travel are endless and I hope I make it to Space in my lifetime. Just the prospect and “what it would be like” feeling fueled by this incredible video is enough to make my hair stand on edge! May it fire up all our dreams and serve to inspire us everyday.
Here is the link to make your booking to Space.
Here is the Press Release for Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo.
All images courtesy of Virgin Galactic.
Space travel has been on my mind since I got to know about this venture. For someone who detests flights, it will take a lot of convincing to go aboard one of these. But then again, why not?
It will indeed be an opportunity of a lifetime! While $200000 looks steep for now, we should keep that in perspective with how much people have paid before this.
Nice, comprehensive post… always found bits and pieces of this information in different articles / blogs, but this one sums up the works with good commentary
Thanks Jayanth
I especially like the link to make the booking
Well, this is for real after all. People have pre-booked and if one has the money, you can make a booking to go to space! Simply awesome.
Interesting post. Would be nice to do space travel before one dies. Who knows, things may change in some decades.
Sunil, this is happening very much in our lifetime. Virgin Galactic is already accepting bookings!