Virgin Galactic, a space tourism company within Virgin Group, launched a spaceship into sub-orbit on Monday. They’ve been trying to design a commercial aircraft capable of launching tourists into space since 2004. The spaceship, called SpaceShip Two, completed its first powered flight over the Mojave Desert on Monday. The founder of Virgin Group, Sir Richard Branson, said that the flight could not have gone more smoothly. A special twin-fuselage jet carried SpaceShipTwo for forty-five minutes as they climbed to an altitude of 47,000 feet. The spacecraft was then released from the jet and…

With the demise of its Space Shuttle program, NASA is turning to Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, as well as other private companies, to send engineers, scientists, and equipment to space. The US space agency has signed two-year contracts worth a combined $10 million with Virgin Galactic, XCOR, and five other companies. The partnerships are needed for NASA to execute a variety of experiments in low-gravity environments. “The government’s ability to open the suborbital research frontier to a broad community of innovators will enable maturation of the new technologies and capabilities…

I was bored and decided to check out the Virgin Galactic site earlier. I ended up accidentally swallowing an entire ice cube and giving myself massive brain freeze when I noticed a little “book” option. For those not in the know, Virgin Galactic is the project started by Virgin CEO Richard Branson with the final hope of private space flight. The original plan was for tickets to be $200,000 and it seems the company plans on living up to that. God, my head still hurts as I type this, I’m going to send Richard Branson an invoice for causing me such pain and suffering. You can now book tickets by paying…