After several years of development, Virgin Galactic finally pushes the boundaries of space with ‘paying customers’ aboard the VSS Unity spacecraft.
a Galactic 01 took off from New Mexico, USAWith three officers of the Italian Air Force and an investigator on the flight, it was He conducted a microgravity experiment on board.
It was a few minutes after 4pm in mainland Portugal when the live broadcast started, Already with VSS Unity on a VMS EVE transport plane.
Click on the pictures for more details
In addition, Richard Branson’s space tourism company confirmed a second flight, scheduled for the beginning of August And it will carry a special crew. After that, the idea is to have the trips monthlythough no details of future missions were provided.
The official start of Virgin Galactic’s space tourism offer came about a month after the launch A manned flight served as the final test for both the VMS EVE carrier aircraft and the VSS Unity spacecraft.
the journey It lasts about 90 minutes, but only 10 minutes are spent in space. However, the experience offers the possibility of leaving passengers and surfacing Weightlessness.
Watch the in-flight video of the test flight posted by Virgin Galactic
The latest available data showed that About 800 customers have already purchased tickets. From 2005 to 2014, Virgin Galactic sold about 600 space tickets, worth between $200,000 and $250,000. Another 200 have sold in recent years for $450,000 each.
It was the company’s first spaceflight Made with Richard Branson himself on board, July 2021.
Click on the pictures to see more details
Then Virgin Galactic announced the launch Break to improve equipmentwhich lasted much longer than originally planned.
Delay in space tourism would be the “lesser of two evils” for the Virgin Group, which recently It was forced to cancel its plans for outer space, and sell Virgin Orbit. Initially, it was expected to seek funding for a temporary week-long break, but Virgin Orbit ended up suspending space activity permanently, indefinitely.
In just a month, Richard Branson’s company has come out with excitement over its historic Start Me Up mission, which will be its first from British soil; For complete shutdown of operations for failing the same mission, due to an anomaly in LauncherOne, which prevented the missile from reaching the required orbit.
The auction ended with the sale of Virgin Orbit’s assets Revenue of $ 36 million, which is far from what the company was in 2021.
