Sir Richard Bransons’ Virgin Galactic is planning test flights in 2011 for their first commercial passenger spaceplane called SpaceShipTwo. The rocket-propelled spaceplane could herald a coming-of-age for the commercial space tourism industry.
Virgin Galactic expects to begin regular operation of SpaceShipTwo within two or three years, giving their customers a truly out-of-this-world sub-orbital ride to see the curvature of the Earth, the vastness of space and experience true weightlessness – for a grand total of fifteen minutes.
Already over 300 wannabe astronauts have placed US$45 million in deposits for their US$200,000 ride into space. The entire project is costing around US$450 million with six commercial spaceplanes to be built and launched from the New Mexico launch site.
In December 2009, Virgin Galactic unveiled SpaceShipTwo at Mojave Spaceport, California. Sir Richard Branson, Burt Rutan (Scaled Composites), Governors Bill Richardson and Arnold Schwarzenegger were all present and helped Holly, Branson’s daughter, in naming the spaceship VSS Enterprise.
VSS Enterprise was taxied along the runway attached to her mothership, VMS Eve, making an impressive sight and giving a taste of the excitement for the forthcoming launches. However the cost to the earth in greenhouse gases makes this vanity flight a lot more expensive than the ticket price.
Virgin Galactic: www.virgingalactic.com/
Trevor Williams is a University of Victoria Mechanical Engineering PhD candidate specializing in renewable energy, power grid modeling and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. He has a bachelors in Aeronautical Engineering, a Masters in Management Science and over 23 years international experience in the space industry, having worked on Earth observation and telecommunications satellites. He is the author of the Eco-Geek blog.
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