FLYING HIGHER
Virgin Galactic’s latest successful spaceship test brings tourist trips closer
Richard Branson is a step closer to getting to space. On Tuesday, Virgin Galactic, the company he founded more than a decade ago with the goal of flying tourists to the edge of space and back from a site in New Mexico, performed another test flight over the Mojave Desert in California.
SpaceShipTwo Unity, a winged space plane, went supersonic for the second time, firing its engine for just 31 seconds. But that was enough to power the vehicle to an altitude of nearly 22 miles and a maximum speed of almost Mach 2, or twice the speed of sound.
In an interview after the flight, Branson said, “It was as good as it gets today.” The pilots, he said, “came back with massive beams on their faces. It’s a big, big step today.”
The successful test means Virgin Galactic is closer to moving operations to Spaceport America, near Truth or Consequences.
The company plans to have another test flight in about six weeks or so, he said, and then it could attempt to reach the edge of space on the next flight, but that would depend on how the vehicle performs in the test flights.
Virgin Galactic, which charges $250,000 a ticket, has some 700 people signed up to fly, and Branson has said he would be among the first to go. To prepare for his flight, which he has said could come this year, the 67-year-old said he’s been cycling, playing tennis in the morning and evening, and spending time in a centrifuge to get his body used to the additional gravitational forces passengers would experience on SpaceShipTwo.
Blue Origin, the space company owned by Jeff Bezos, is also aiming to fly its first test flights with people by the end of this year.
Branson said he expected that the companies would both “have a person in space roundabout the same time.” But he said they “are not in a race to get to space . ... All that matters in the end is that everybody is safe and well.”
SpaceShipTwo is “air launched,” meaning it is tethered to the belly of a mother ship, which flies to some 45,000 feet. Then the spacecraft is released; it fires its engine and powers off through the atmosphere.
The program has had multiple setbacks. In 2014, a previous version of SpaceShipTwo came apart midflight, killing the co-pilot, Michael Alsbury.