Richard Branson unveils civilian spacecraft & commercial spaceflights
British billionaire businessman Sir Richard Branson unveiled his plan to allow any one of us regular folks with dreams of space travel and to experience the thrill of weightlessness to do so. Branson announced the roll-out of the Virgin Galactic spaceliner in California’s Mojave desert on Monday, December 7, 2009. But if you’re hoping for an economy class flight to travel to Earth’s orbit for a thrill, you’re going to be disappointed. Tickets are not cheap; they are expected to cost $200,000 each. However, there’s still time for future space tourists to beg or borrow that money for that dream spaceflight, as Branson’s engineers are planning test flights of SpaceShipTwo next year, with commercial space flights launching between 2011 and 2012.
Becoming the world’s first commercial spacecraft, SpaceShipTwo (SS2) will undergo testing over the next 18 months before being allowed to take ticketed individuals on short-hop trips just above Earth’s atmosphere. Branson plans to be on the spaceliner’s first passenger flight, accompanied by his family and the American designer of the spaceship, Burt Rutan.
SpaceShipTwo is projected to carry six passengers with two pilots. Built from lightweight carbon composite materials and powered by a hybrid rocket motor, SpaceShipTwo is based on the Ansari X Prize-winning SpaceShipOne concept – a rocket plane that is lifted initially by a carrier vehicle before blasting skywards. SpaceShipOne (SS1) became the world’s first private spaceship with a series of high-altitude flights in 2004. However, SpaceShipTwo is twice as large, measuring 18m (60ft) in length. SpaceShipTwo’s carrier plane is called White Knight Two. It was finished last year and has already begun its own trials. As of 2008[update], Virgin Galactic is planning to have a fleet of two White Knight Two motherships and five or more SpaceShipTwo tourist suborbital spacecraft.
Branson unveils civilian spacecraft: a video news report by Todd Baer (from Al Jazeera English News, 8 Dec 2009):
At $200,000 per space trip, it’s a fraction of the estimated $35-million (U.S.) cost that space tourist Cirque du Soleil’s Guy Laliberté paid to join the crew of a Russian Soyuz mission, Expedition 21, to the International Space Station (ISS). Laliberté’s space experience started on board Soyuz TMA-16 for the 30 September 2009 launch, arrived at the ISS two days later, organized his space show “Moving Stars and Earth for Water” crusade, and hopped aboard the Soyuz TMA-14 spacecraft for his flight back to Earth, arriving October 11, 2009. Laliberté’s space mission was organized by U.S.-based space tour operator Space Adventures, which organized the previous space trips for private citizens. With the retirement of NASA’s space shuttles in 2010 and the expansion of the ISS station to six crew members, all Soyuz crew positions for the foreseeable future should be occupied by ISS Expedition crew members. Laliberté could be the last space tourist to the ISS for a while. NASA plans to use Orion spacecraft for its human spaceflight missions after their last shuttle orbiter is retired. The first crewed Orion flight is anticipated in 2015.
Similar Posts:
- Expedition 21 Soyuz Launch to International Space Station (ISS) – Sept. 30, 2009
- Video: Expedition 21 Soyuz Gets Ready for Sept. 30 Launch to ISS
- Expedition 21 Soyuz – ISS Undocking, Landing & Crew Recovery
- Expedition 21 Crew Enters the International Space Station (ISS)
- Expedition 20/SFP Welcome at Russian Training Base
