Spaceship Two flies high (though not as high as it could)

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 began ascending on its own. The engine only burned for sixteen seconds but the spacecraft managed to break the sound barrier (768 mph) and climbed an additional 8,000 feet before the engine stopped and the spacecraft began it’s slow descent.

This is the first time since the Concorde that a commercially built aircraft has broken the sound barrier. The test flight, which lasted about ten minutes, is a massive step forward for the company. Branson suspects that they’ll be able to start sending people to space as early as the end of this year. It’s certainly not cheap to enjoy a sub-orbital flight, however.

The initial cost for a single flight will be $250,000 but once they send a thousand people into space they’ll lower the price. The price may seem ridiculously unaffordable but over five-hundred people have already signed up. Don’t let this squash your dreams of going to space though. This is just the first successful attempt at commercializing space travel. As time goes by and technology improves, the price of space tourism will eventually drop to a price more affordable to most people.

Would You Take A Zero-G Holiday?

Once upon a time we’d take fast fairground rides to get a sense of it, nowadays we can actually, you know, just do it: head off into the wide blue yonder of zero gravity sensation.

Sensation seekers these days have this new option on their itinerary, for when those picnics and beach holidays get a little tired, why not get a sense of life on Mars?

Space.com talks up the holidays offered by Zero Gravity Corporation, who are taking people up and out in a G-Force One airplane to experience weightlessness.

These are all part of the many ongoing 21st-Century experiments attempting to assess the scientific and societal advantages of space vehicles and the benefits of pushing forward toward privatized space flight.

Back to vacationing: Zero-G flights are available from: Las Vegas, Nev., Cape Canaveral, Fla., and Titusville, Fla. Seattle, Wash., Los Angeles, Calif., Washington, D.C. and New York also sometimes see scheduled flights.

These zero-G explorers spent 11 years getting the licenses they needed for these flights, since then 6,000 people have taken the rides. And while Zero-G’s flights never leave Earth’s orbit, they will do, one day…

We have ordinary, rich citizens flying in space now, but very few of them because they are very expensive,” Bretton Alexander, president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, told SPACE.com.

“For the ordinary person of more modest means, it might be a couple decades, but it certainly should be in the next 40 years. In my mind, it’s not if it’s going to happen, it’s when.”

They ain’t cheap — a spell in Zero-G costs $4,950 per person. 36 passengers go up for each ride, they get 45 minutes training and then, ‘boom’, up, up and away they go. Kind of like Buzz Lightyear. But only kinda.

Would you do it?

Via: Space.com

Spaceship Two flies high (though not as high as it could)

Would You Take A Zero-G Holiday?

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