very soon, very far, very fast
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Virgin Galactic recently unveiled a mock-up of the slick, Philippe Starck --designed interior of its SpaceShipTwo (SS2) suborbital tourist vehicle.
The real bird won't be shown for at least a year, but at a press conference in New York, led by Richard Branson himself and Virgin Galactic chief Will Whitehorn, gave a good peek into how the program is progressing and what these first consumer spaceflights will be like.
The cabin itself is more than three times as large as that of the X Prize-winning SpaceShipOne (SS1), accommodating six passengers and two pilots and permitting plenty of float-around possibilities during the estimated five minutes of weightlessness the vehicle will achieve at the peak of its ascent.
Burt Rutan, designer of both vehicles and their motherships, White Knight and WhiteKnightTwo (WK2), and his team at Scaled Composites seem to be on track for the prototype unveiling late next year, although the stated 2009 commencement of commercial flights seems optimistic, given the apparent delays in the development of the scaled-up, more complex SS2.
Mockups of the cabin hints at Rutan's strategy -- make the spaceflight experience user-friendly for anyone other than hardcore test pilots.
[...]
SS2's hybrid motor will then ignite, accelerating passengers at four Gs to three times the speed of sound. For reentry, SS2's wings will pitch upward, "feathering" in a shuttlecock formation to automatically position the ship for the steep descent. At 70,000 feet, the wings will return to a horizontal glide formation for the runway landing.
Branson, in keeping with his recently announced commitment to environmental consciousness, extolled the spaceship's green qualities.
"It might be strange to think of a space vehicle as 'green,' " he said, "especially when you consider that the amount of energy released in a typical space shuttle launch could power New York City for a week. But we've created a fuel for SS2 that can launch eight people into space while expending the same amount of carbon dioxide as a single business-class seat on a New York-to-London flight."
The first SS2 will be called VSS Enterprise, and Virgin Galactic expects its first full fleet to comprise two motherships and five SS2s -- which would also permit the company to quickly expand its operations beyond the initial spaceport in New Mexico to other countries that permit the flights (the U.K. is high on its list).
Virgin is sticking by their ticket price of $200,000 and expects to offer lotteries and other means of democratizing the opportunity, including a reality-TV game show that is now under development.
Longer-term, Whitehorn says, the program is "about developing a methodology for spaceflight." He expects to use the SS2 technology for space and Earth-science studies, to expand to orbital flights, and to begin offering high-speed "spaceline" service going from, say, London to Sydney in less than an hour.
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Virgin Galactic recently unveiled a mock-up of the slick, Philippe Starck --designed interior of its SpaceShipTwo (SS2) suborbital tourist vehicle.
The real bird won't be shown for at least a year, but at a press conference in New York, led by Richard Branson himself and Virgin Galactic chief Will Whitehorn, gave a good peek into how the program is progressing and what these first consumer spaceflights will be like.
The cabin itself is more than three times as large as that of the X Prize-winning SpaceShipOne (SS1), accommodating six passengers and two pilots and permitting plenty of float-around possibilities during the estimated five minutes of weightlessness the vehicle will achieve at the peak of its ascent.
Burt Rutan, designer of both vehicles and their motherships, White Knight and WhiteKnightTwo (WK2), and his team at Scaled Composites seem to be on track for the prototype unveiling late next year, although the stated 2009 commencement of commercial flights seems optimistic, given the apparent delays in the development of the scaled-up, more complex SS2.
Mockups of the cabin hints at Rutan's strategy -- make the spaceflight experience user-friendly for anyone other than hardcore test pilots.
[...]
SS2's hybrid motor will then ignite, accelerating passengers at four Gs to three times the speed of sound. For reentry, SS2's wings will pitch upward, "feathering" in a shuttlecock formation to automatically position the ship for the steep descent. At 70,000 feet, the wings will return to a horizontal glide formation for the runway landing.
Branson, in keeping with his recently announced commitment to environmental consciousness, extolled the spaceship's green qualities.
"It might be strange to think of a space vehicle as 'green,' " he said, "especially when you consider that the amount of energy released in a typical space shuttle launch could power New York City for a week. But we've created a fuel for SS2 that can launch eight people into space while expending the same amount of carbon dioxide as a single business-class seat on a New York-to-London flight."
The first SS2 will be called VSS Enterprise, and Virgin Galactic expects its first full fleet to comprise two motherships and five SS2s -- which would also permit the company to quickly expand its operations beyond the initial spaceport in New Mexico to other countries that permit the flights (the U.K. is high on its list).
Virgin is sticking by their ticket price of $200,000 and expects to offer lotteries and other means of democratizing the opportunity, including a reality-TV game show that is now under development.
Longer-term, Whitehorn says, the program is "about developing a methodology for spaceflight." He expects to use the SS2 technology for space and Earth-science studies, to expand to orbital flights, and to begin offering high-speed "spaceline" service going from, say, London to Sydney in less than an hour.
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