Virgin Galactic on Wednesday 23rd January 2008 launched a new spacecraft that would fly Humans to space.
The SpaceShipTwo spacecraft and its WhiteKnightTwo carrier will begin initial tests this summer to shakedown the novel spaceflight system designed by aerospace pioneer Burt Rutan and his firm Scaled Composites.
"2008 really will be the year of the spaceship," said British entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, who unveiled a 1/16th-scale model of the new spacecraft here at the American Museum of Natural History.
Based on Rutan's SpaceShipOne, a piloted and reusable spacecraft that won the $10 million Ansari X Prize for suborbital spaceflight in 2004, SpaceShipTwo is an air-launched vehicle designed to carry six passengers and two pilots to suborbital space and back.
Virgin Galactic is offering tickets aboard SpaceShipTwo spaceliners for an initial price of about $200,000, though Branson said the cost is expected to drop after the first five years of operations.
The space tourism firm plans to eventual launch flights out of a terminal at New Mexico's Spaceport America, with additional trips through the aurora borealis to be staged from Kiruna, Sweden.
To date, Virgin Galactic has about 200 assured passengers for future flights, $30 million in deposits and about 85,000 registrations from customers interested in flying aboard SpaceShipTwo.
Each spacecraft is designed to fly twice a day, with their WhiteKnightTwo carriers capable of up to four daily launches, Rutan said. Over 12 years, more than 100,000 people could fly to suborbital space aboard the vehicles, he added.
Will Whitehorn, Virgin Galactic CEO, said each SpaceShipTwo passenger will be equipped with a pressure suit as a safety precaution, be free to move about a roomy cabin equivalent to a Gulfstream aircraft and peer at the Earth through wide, 18-inch (46-cm) windows during several minutes of weightlessness offered on each spaceflightFamily members of passengers or other space tourists can watch a SpaceShipTwo launch from inside a WhiteKnightTwo cabin, each of which sits just 25 feet (7.6) meters from the center-mounted spaceship.
While the initial round of tests is slated for sometime this summer and the first spaceflights pegged for 2009, Whitehorn stressed that safety is paramount.
Patricia Grace Smith, the FAA's associate administrator for commercial space transportation, lauded the commitment of Virgin Galactic and Scaled to safety after SpaceShipTwo's unveiling. "It is the entrepreneurial spirit that will take this country forward," Smith said. "This is going to catch like a wild fire we have never seen."
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