Posted on 07/26/2018 2:55:40 PM PDT by BenLurkin
The VSS Unity is a SpaceShipTwo vehicle designed to carry six commercial passengers and two pilots into space, where they will experience 5 minutes of weightlessness before gliding back down to Earth.
"It was a thrill from start to finish," the craft's chief pilot, Dave Mackay, said in a statement about today's flight. "Unity's rocket motor performed magnificently again, and Sooch [co-pilot Mike Masucci] pulled off a smooth landing. This was a new altitude record for both of us in the cockpit, not to mention our mannequin in the back, and the views of Earth from the black sky were magnificent."
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After separating, the VSS Unity fired its engines for 42 seconds, shifted to a nearly vertical angle and accelerated to 2.47 times the speed of sound.
After gliding back down to Earth, the space plane touched down safely at Mojave Air and Space Port in California shortly before 1 p.m. EDT (1700 GMT).
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As with previous flights, today's test flight was designed in part to gather additional data about conditions in the cabin during flight, according to the company's statement. Virgin Galactic founder Sir Richard Branson said the company could launch space tourists aboard the VSS Unity by the end of 2018, and tickets are already on sale for $250,000 apiece
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
Nice pic!
Hopefully, the ‘aabar’ doesn’t turn into ‘fubar’.
;)
Practically life size. :)
Verified virgins get to travel half fare!
SpaceX is getting PAID by the US GOVERNMENT to fly missions to the ISS. So what.
“but this is really an incredible work of technology for a private entity to pull off.”
And actually privately developed instead of developed by money from big NASA contracts.
“Yep. SpaceShipOne flew before SpaceX, but they’ve been screwing up ever since then.”
Your right. They lost a test pilot. How many pilots has SpaceX lost? Oh right... zero because they have launched ZERO.
A far better comparison would be generated revenue.
Like I said Branson’s group has been screwing up for some time.
They’ve killed people on the ground as well as the air, and they aren’t making any money.
https://www.businessinsider.com/virgin-galactic-failure-fatality-in-2007-2014-10
Considering the original Rutan design made its test flight over 14 years ago, the big screwup was in failing to get a prototype of a profitable platform into test flight at least nine years ago. They'd have owned the suborbital thrill ride biz. The likely outcome now is they'll be a footnote, even if there's never BFR point-to-point service.
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