SPACE TEST FLIGHT FIRES UP BRANSON FOR NEW BOOKINGS
▶ Magnate promises commercial trips next year after craft attains altitude of 82 kilometres on flight over US
Sir Richard Branson is planning to increase production of spaceships and take new bookings as he prepares for the launch of commercial flights as soon as next year.
Minutes after Virgin Galactic successfully propelled its Unity craft into space, attaining an altitude of 82 kilometres, Mr Branson said the test flight was just a taste of things to come.
Two more vehicles, each capable of carrying six paying passengers, are being built at the company’s hangar in Mojave, or what he called the “chocolate factory” in a reference to Willy Wonka’s magical plant.
“We will soon start on the fourth and the fifth spaceships,” Mr Branson said. “We’re going to need another White Knight to be built.”
The White Knight is the mothercraft that carries the passenger vehicle high enough for it to be launched into space.
Mr Branson said that at some point, the operation will move from Mojave Air and Space port – a former naval air base in California that is now a centre for America’s private space industry – to a port designed to handle passengers.
“The whole operation will move to New Mexico where we have this beautiful spaceport built and ready to accommodate us,” he said. “So some time next year when the testing is finished it will move there. Then I’ll do my flight.”
More than 600 people have already paid $250,000 to put their names on a waiting list. With recent progress towards launching commercial flights, Mr Branson said he was ready to reopen bookings.
“We stopped for the past four years taking new people but quite soon we’ll start opening up to new people who would like the chance to experience it,” he said.
He predicted the price would go up initially to absorb the cost of developing space travel, before dropping as the number of craft increased.
Earlier, Mr Branson joined hundreds of staff and observers cheering as Virgin Galactic succeeded in sending two men into space.
Virgin Galactic’s development of its spaceship took far longer than expected and endured a setback when the first experimental craft broke apart during a 2014 test flight, killing the co-pilot.
Mr Branson originally envisaged fleets of spaceships sending passengers into space by 2007.
He said there had been tears of tragedy and tears of joy along the way as he thanked the people who made it possible.
“The whole team here, whether it’s the test pilots who are incredibly brave people, who are testing things that can’t be tested on the ground that you can only find out in flight, right through to the massive team that have created a spaceship that can now, once it’s finished the test programme, start to go safely into space for myself and thousands of other people like me,” Mr Branson said.
“Tears of relief as well. When you are in the test flight programme of the company you can never be completely 100 per cent sure, because that’s what a test flight programme is, to test it to its limits.
“The spaceship was tested to its limits today and she performed just as we wished, and we couldn’t be happier.”