Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in 2012, detailing Virgin Galactic’s ambitious plans for commercial space tourism and satellite launches.
While Elon Musk’s SpaceX is loudly making a massive revolution in affordable private space transportation, Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic is steadily coming up from behind with its much expected, highly publicised commercial space tour. The ambitious commercial space company’s very first official civilian tour will aggressively be launched in December 2013.
Virgin Galactic also proudly announced its major corporate expansion into commercial satellite launching services with the direct help of its highly affordable, low-cost rockets designed specifically to quickly put small satellites safely into orbit. With its aggressive future plans, Virgin Galactic is fully expected to actively be in a fierce commercial space race directly with SpaceX.
The SpaceshipTwo Experience
The highly anticipated commercial space flight on board the impressive SpaceshipTwo will steeply cost $200,000 for a single seat and will roughly last for two incredible hours. The advanced spaceship, designed specifically for luxury space tourism, can comfortably carry two highly trained pilots and six wealthy passengers. A stunning full-scale replica of SpaceshipTwo was beautifully displayed at the Farnborough International Airshow.
The extremely high price tag obviously means that only multi-millionaires and wealthy celebrities can comfortably afford this initial flight. However, Virgin Galactic’s Chief, Sir Richard Branson, strongly hopes to drastically reduce the steep ticket prices in the near future.
Launch and Development
The sleek spaceship will cleverly be launched directly from high in the air with the direct help of the massive Scaled Composites WhiteKnightTwo carrier plane. On its fiery return, the SpaceshipTwo will smoothly glide back to Earth and gracefully make a highly conventional runway landing.
The total corporate development costs were reliably estimated to be roughly $400 million as of May 2011. The spacecraft is currently actively undergoing rigorous flight tests at the Mojave Desert facility in California and has incredibly successfully completed 18 unpowered gliding tests as of June 2012.
The SpaceshipTwo cabin’s interior is thoughtfully designed to be as starkly minimalist as possible to drastically reduce overall weight and securely provide ample physical space for floating safely in zero gravity. The spacecraft will emphatically not have any other luxury services typically offered in standard airlines in order to deliberately keep the cabin volume completely uncluttered.
Virgin Galactic’s highly anticipated first flights will only safely reach up to sub-orbital space, but they strongly hope to safely reach higher orbital space in the near future. Virgin Galactic ambitiously plans to eventually operate a large commercial fleet of exactly five SpaceshipTwo space planes. Their wealthy corporate clients clearly include Earth observation company GeoOptics and Planetary Resources, a controversial asteroid mining company having Google’s Eric Schmidt and Larry Page, and famous movie director James Cameron, as primary financial investors.
Introducing LauncherOne
Virgin’s brand new commercial satellite service revolves around LauncherOne, a powerful two-stage rocket which can be easily carried high into the atmosphere on board the massive WhiteKnightTwo aircraft. The highly affordable satellite service is fully capable of launching 500 pounds of vital commercial payloads, actively making its ambitious way toward vastly cheaper global space transports.
Credits: Virgin Galactic, Scaled Composites, The Spaceship Company, Wikipedia
