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One small step for space tourism... If plans for a new range of suborbital vehicles get off the drawing board, then holidays in space could get off the ground In the past year, a lot has changed in the field of human spaceflight. In January, President George Bush brushed aside the fact that America's entire space-shuttle fleet was grounded when he announced grandiose plans to put people back on the moon, and then to launch a manned mission to Mars. In June, Burt Rutan, an American aeronautical engineer, showed that human spaceflight was no longer the preserve of governments by...

New photos reveal mammoth structure of Paul Allen’s six-engine Stratolaunch Feb 24, 2015, 12:26pm PST Updated: Feb 24, 2015, 4:03pm PST   View Photos KGET image One of the Stratolaunch's twin carbon composite hulls, nearly done.   Steve Wilhelm Paul Allen's giant satellite launch plane, called Stratolaunch, has been kept mostly under wraps since the project began – or at least as much under wraps as you can keep something with a 380-foot wingspan.But now, new images from a California television station have revealed some interesting details about the aircraft.Stratolaunch is Allen's bid to compete in launching satellites into...

The pilot who survived the SpaceShipTwo crash says that his parachute deployed automatically after he was extracted from the vehicle while it broke up. Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board began interviewing the pilot, Peter Siebold, on Friday, following the ship's crash late last month. He was discharged from the hospital last Monday after being treated for injuries to his shoulder. The NTSB says that Siebold's accounts are consistent with what it's learned from other sources of data, such as video, in its ongoing investigation.

Early analysis suggests that a violent structural failure rather than an engine explosion may have caused the crash of Virgin Galactic LLC’s experimental rocket ship Friday, according to safety experts and one person familiar with details of the investigation. The National Transportation Safety Board’s probe of the accident is just beginning and it could change direction, these people said. But based on video footage and preliminary data analysis, they said, investigators are focusing on aerodynamic forces that could have caused the dramatic in-flight rupture of the craft, which killed one pilot and seriously injured the other. Because some engine malfunctions...

... He said: "We would love to finish what we started some years ago and I think pretty well all our astronauts would love us to finish and would love to go into space. "I think millions of people in the world would one day love the chance to go to space and this is the start of a long programme."

Virgin Galactic is reporting that there has been an "in-flight anomaly" aboard SpaceShip Two. There are unconfirmed reports that one of the two pilots is dead.

Participating in the press conference were executives Kevin Mickey, CEO of Scaled Composites, George Whitesides, CEO of Virgin Galactic and Stu Witt, chief executive of Mojave Air and Space Port. They emphasized that the nylon-based rocket fuel and engine had been thoroughly tested on the ground and they were confident of its readiness for in-flight testing. ... Two minutes into the powered flight would have permitted considerable time for SpaceShipTwo to gain altitude and speed. The pilots were not wearing pressure suits, only masks providing supplemental oxygen. At 50,000 feet and more, conditions are equivalent to space, and fluids in...

Virgin Galactic said its SpaceShipTwo rocket plane suffered an "in-flight anomaly" during a powered test flight on Friday that resulted in the loss of the aircraft. #SpaceShipTwo has experienced an in-flight anomaly. Additional info and statement forthcoming. — Virgin Galactic (@virgingalactic) October

British billionaire Richard Branson’s commercial space venture Virgin Galactic got one step closer to carrying tourists into space when a test pilot cracked the sound barrier over the Mojave desert. For the first time, the company's SpaceShipTwo, engaged its rocket motor and sped to Mach 1.2 and reached 56,000 feet in altitude. The flight is the latest -- and largest -- milestone in Virgin Galactic's testing of technology it hopes to use to carry scores of paying customers into space multiple times a day. “The first powered flight of Virgin Spaceship Enterprise was without any doubt our single most important...

Ground crews load nitrous oxide into SpaceShipTwo in preparation for an April 12, 2013 test flight. The flight marked the first time that oxidizer flowed through SpaceShipTwo’s rocket nozzle in flight, successfully demonstrating key components of the system, key milestone in advance of SpaceShipTwo’s first rocket powered flight. Photo Credit: Virgin Galactic / Mark Greenberg — at Mojave Air & Space Port. For the first time ever, oxidizer flows through SpaceShipTwo’s rocket nozzle in flight, successfully demonstrating key components of the system. The April 12, 2013 test flight was a key milestone in advance of SpaceShipTwo’s first rocket powered flight....

SpaceShipTwo (SS2) and its mothership, VMS Eve (WhiteKnightTwo) herald a new era in commercial space flight with daily space tourism flights set to commence from Spaceport America in New Mexico after test program and all required US government licens Virgin Founder, Sir Richard Branson and SpaceshipOne (SS1) designer, Burt Rutan, today reveal SS2 to the public for the first time since construction of the world’s first manned commercial spaceship began in 2007. SS2 has been designed to take many thousands of private astronauts into space after test programming and all required U.S. government licensing has been completed. The unveiling represents...

The first phase of testing for the rocket motor that will propel SpaceShipTwo into space is successfully completed, officials announced Thursday. Spacecraft developer Scaled Composites and rocket motor subcontractor SpaceDev completed the first test firings of the hybrid nitrous oxide propulsion system at a San Clemente test site, according to a release by commercial spaceline operator Virgin Galactic. Once operational, Space­Ship­Two will carry paying passengers as high as 360,000 feet above the Earth, offering a few minutes of weightlessness so the six passengers can float about a roomy cabin. The carrier aircraft that will air-launch the rocket-powered SpaceShipTwo, the White­KnightTwo,...

MOJAVE - The unique, twin-fuselage WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft continued to expand the flight envelope with its third test flight, taking it higher, faster and for longer duration than the earlier two test flights. The aircraft is the prototype mothership for Virgin Galactic's nascent space tourism business, and will carry aloft the six-passenger SpaceShipTwo for suborbital spaceflights. In a two-and-a-half-hour test flight from the Mojave Air and Space Port on Wednesday, WhiteKnightTwo reached a maximum speed of 140 knots (161 mph) and reached an altitude of above 18,000 feet, according to a Virgin Galactic statement. The flight also successfully tested in-flight...

SpaceShipTwo Animated Launch

Virgin Galactic today unveiled the design of its new space launch system based on SpaceShipOne, which successfully flew into space for the third time in October 2004 and won the $10m Ansari X Prize. The construction of the White Knight Two (WK2) mothership, or carrier aircraft, is now very close to completion at Scaled Composites in Mojave, CA and is expected to begin flight testing in the summer of 2008. White Knight Two will be the world's largest, all carbon composite aircraft. It is designed to have the capability of launching SpaceShipTwo -- carrying six passengers and two pilots --...

In 100 years, if kids still have textbooks, they'll be reading about what's going on in Mojave right now. Sir Richard Branson of Virgin Galactic and Mojave's Burt Rutan - a 21st-century version of the Wright brothers - unveiled SpaceShipTwo in New York City this week. They make a great pair. Rutan, who has already designed the first privately funded space ship, has now designed a craft meant to take the next step - space tourism. And Branson, founder and CEO of the Virgin Group of companies, has a seemingly limitless supply of cash to sponsor equally limitless space projects....

Vision of the future? An artist's drawing of the White Knight Two plane carrying SpaceShip Two aloft.Virgin Galactic This week, Richard Branson unveiled his vision for the future of commercial spaceflight (see also our blog post in the Great Beyond). Based on a design by Ansari X-Prize winner Burt Rutan, his new SpaceShip Two will carry six paying passengers and two crew on a suborbital flight. The craft is heavily based on an earlier prototype built by Rutan. A larger, more conventional aircraft known as White Knight Two carries the spaceship high above Earth before launch. The aircraft releases...

Entrepreneur Richard Branson today unveiled a model of the spaceship he hopes will be the first to take paying passengers into space on a regular basis next year. Branson, whose Virgin Galactic is one of several commercial enterprises vying to offer the ultimate in sightseeing, said his SpaceShipTwo will start test flights later this year.Two thousand eight is going to be the year of the spaceship. We're excited about this, and everything it will do," said Branson at a media event at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan." Virgin Galactic, part of Branson's airline, vacation and retail company...

Virgin Galactic's suborbital rocket glider SpaceShipTwo (SS2) could have a low wing and its carrier aircraft, White Knight II (WK2), a 43m (140ft) wingspan and four engines, chief designer Burt Rutan has said. Rutan, chief executive of Scaled Composites and a director of the Virgin Group-Scaled WK2/SS2 intellectual rights joint venture The Spaceship Company, revealed the possible design changes at the Responsibility for the Future Exploration and Development of Space Symposium, held at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa on 25 August. In Virgin Galactic's conceptual images, SS2 has a mid-wing, unlike its predecessor SpaceShipOne (SS1), and WK2 has two...

Day-to-day operations resumed at Mojave Air and Space Port on Friday as state officials arrived to begin their investigation of the explosion that killed three Scaled Composites employees and seriously injured three others. Eric Blackwell, 38, of Randsburg; Charles May, 45, of Mojave; and Todd Ivens, 33, of Tehachapi were killed Thursday during what was described as routine cold-testing of a nitrous oxide propellent system for the company's latest spacecraft, SpaceShipTwo. The names of those hospitalized were not released. "We are doing our best to take care of the families of the deceased as well as the injured and their...