On December 7, 2009, Virgin Galactic unveiled a commercial spaceship that would send it’s customers into space, for a hefty fee. Co-founder Sir Richard Branson and designer Burt Rutan created this ship to send people out beyond Earth’s atmosphere. There is no specific destination for this aircraft. It is only a flight that brings its passengers more than 65 miles above the Earth’s surface. This two and a half hour flight will include around five minutes of pure weightlessness. The ticket prices have been set as $200,000 a person.
This ship, called SpaceShipTwo, will be expected to be running in 2011 as test runs will begin next year. Safety is a big priority to Branson because if any unfortunate accident occurs on the first trips, it will spell disaster for the company. In 2007, an accident during a routine test of the propellant system killed three engineers and delayed the completion of the spacecraft. Branson will conduct rigorous test to make the travel as safe as possible.
Made from materials that are lightweight enough to create this two and half hour flight, it ranges from sixty feet long from nose to tip. It can hold up to six passengers and two pilots. This is more than double of its predecessor, the SpaceShipOne which could only hold three people. Virgin Galactic has set aside a grand sum of $400 million aside to create a large fleet of five of these commercial space craft’s to send more customers into space.
These trips will be launched out of New Mexico. Already around three hundred clients, including California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, have either placed down a deposit or have paid the hefty sum of $200,000. There have been no commercial space craft’s but many wealthy people have paid varies amounts of money to travel as a passenger along Russian space shuttles to the International Space Station.
Virgin Galactic is not the only proprietor in the commercial spacecraft. Amazon.com Chief Exec Jeff Bezos is building his own rocket. This could mean, in the near future, there will be a business of space flight. It will be almost as common as air travel. This is the future of space travel and commercial space crafts.
1 comment:
I think it's weird we will be traveling into space as easily as we travel to florida today. I'm not entirely syre on how the flight system works though. Does the spaceship just go straight up in the air and back down or is there a certain destination it goes to? Anyway, safety should be a huge problem.
The fact that there were problems already is a little scary. I'm sure there are major precautions being taken now but people have already died making this. Is traveling sixty five miles in the sky really worth the lives of three engineers? I understand that there is a certain level of curiosity to fly in space but i think this may be a little to much. There's nothing else these people can be spending two hundred thousand dollars on?
I think is a jumping off point for space travel in the future though. With technology advancing every year, I'm sure one day a trip to the moon will be common. I just don't think the technology is there yet. People are to eager to do this, any it may not be safe. If people die on the space ship, the lawsuits will be extremely high. Or people may have to sign a waiver and inherit the danger. Which in my mind would crazy just to go in the air.
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