Virgin promise: Fly from UK to Australia in two hours – via space
Forget reviving Concorde. Virgin Galactic wants even faster travel
Virgin Galactic – which bills itself as the world's first commercial spaceline – is looking at plans to revolutionise flights around the globe. It wants to eventually provide superfast pointto-point passenger flights that would slash flight times to even the most farflung locations to a couple of hours.
Those on board would end up taking off in space, with a plane taking the spacecraft skywards, dropping it in mid-air and allowing it to power up and jet away.
In doing so, the spacecraft could reach anywhere between Mach 3 (3,704kph/2,302mph) and Mach 5 (6,174kph/3,836mph), according to Virgin Galactic's CEO George Whitesides. It would also be something of a long-term victory for founder Richard Branson, who was thwarted in his attempts to buy Concorde from British Airways a decade ago. If it gets off the ground it would potentially compete with SpaceX, which is also considering the possibilities of using its technology for point-to-point travel.
Still, that is not likely to deter Virgin Galactic whatsoever, and it says all possibilities are on the table. "We don't have to accept the status quo. We can imagine a vehicle using liquid oxygen or liquid hydrogen to get us across the Pacific in an hour. You could do that,” says Whitesides. Quite how much a ticket would cost, however, is an entirely different question.