Virgin Galactic, billionaire Richard Branson’s space travel venture, wants to be first to take paying passengers into space on a scheduled spaceship. Virgin's SpaceShipTwo, introduced in January and currently entering testing, will be able to carry eight people into suborbital space. Virgin expects to start with one flight a week before ramping it up to 14 flights a week.
In 1961, Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to reach space. During the short history of manned exploration of space, only 450 people have been to space. Virgin Galactic aims to dramatically increase that number when it inaugurates commercial scheduled space travel next year. It seems the pent-up demand for such trips is considerable. Prospective space travelers have so far placed deposits with Virgin Galactic totaling more than $31 million for tickets that cost $200,000 apiece and offer each intrepid traveler five minutes in space. Virgin Galactic notes that more than 65,000 applicants have expressed interest in the space flights.
Virgin Galactic will provide each ticket holder with three days of training and preparation for their two-hour flight beyond Earth's atmosphere and five minutes in space. The program will include a zero gravity simulation, procedures for tolerating rapid acceleration and deceleration and familiarization with the Virgin Galactic spaceship. The spaceship will initially be launched from facilities in Mojave, California, but will eventually take off from a new spaceport now being developed in New Mexico.
Virgin Galactic is one of several contenders in the new commercial space race. Others include Astrium, the space arm of the European Aeronautic Defense & Space Company; Blue Origin, started by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos; Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), created by PayPal founder Elon Musk; and Bigelow Aerospace, a venture aimed at creating space hotels, started by hotel owner Robert Bigelow.
Space Adventures, a Vienna, Virginia company, books passage on Russian rockets that take their customers on orbits above Earth and then to the International Space Station where they stay for 10 days. Five customers have paid between $20 million and $25 million to travel on the orbital flights. For the even more adventurous with $100 million to spend, Space Adventures is developing the first private flight around the moon.
Futron Corp., an aerospace consulting firm in Bethesda, Maryland, projects that by 2020, more than 13,000 people will have taken part in the space tourism industry, generating almost $700 million in revenue.
Of the private space travel ventures, Virgin Galactic is the furthest along with spaceships under construction. The Virgin spacecraft, SpaceShipTwo, will be based on the craft used in the world’s first, non-government, commercial space flight. Burt Rutan, the craft’s designer, is supervising construction of the first two Virgin Galactic spaceliners with delivery scheduled for 2010.
Virgin Galactic space flights will be launched from a “mothership” called White Knight Two after the airplane that launched Rutan’s pioneering SpaceShipOne on its historic, record-breaking flight in 2004.
Passengers will board SpaceShipTwo (SS2) as it is held securely in place by the mothership. The SS2 cabin will be fully pressurized at all stages of the flight. Two pilots will be onboard. White Knight Two, expressly designed to carry SS2, will carry the craft to launch altitude thereby eliminating much of the energy a ground launch requires in order to reach a sufficient speed to enter space. The light, carbon-fiber composite construction of SS2 and its proven, solid fuel rocket motor enable SS2 to reach space efficiently.
Once at launch altitude of 50,000 feet, White Knight Two will release SS2 followed by the start of SS2’s hybrid rocket motor for a 45-second burn powering a near-vertical trajectory into space at four times the speed of sound. Upon reaching a minimum altitude of 110 kilometers (68.35 miles, the fringes of space), passengers will be allowed to leave their seats and experience weightlessness and amazing views through large windows that offer 1,000-mile vistas in all directions.
Before gravity again makes its presence felt, passengers will buckle up for re-entry. SpaceShipTwo is designed to make this phase of the flight as comfortable as possible, but high G-forces are inevitable. The seats on SS2 are designed to recline for maximum comfort during launch and re-entry. To re-enter the atmosphere, the spacecraft changes the position of its wings to a configuration resembling that of the “feathers” on a badminton shuttlecock. This configuration creates drag and dissipates the speed and energy of SS2 without the extreme heat buildup that requires special insulation on conventional spacecraft. Once SS2 reaches the stratosphere, it returns the wings to flight position and glides back to a landing at the point of departure.
After landing, each of the passenger/astronauts will receive their space “wings” and a video record of their space adventure. SpaceShipTwo will then be inspected, refueled and readied for its next flight.
Virgin Galactic is approaching space flight as it does commercial air travel. In fact, their operations will be fully regulated and supervised by federal agencies charged with sanctioning space travel.
Are you ready for travel to the ultimate destination? Are you astronaut material? Do you have $200,000 budgeted for your next vacation? If your answers are “yes,” “yes,” and “yes,” all systems are go at Virgin Galactic launch control. Up, up and away!
