Las Cruces: British billionaire Richard Branson matured on Sunday to ride to the passenger rocket passenger of his virgin galaxy and soar more than 50 miles above the New Mexico desert in a vehicle full test flight to the edge of the room.
Branson, one of six employees of Virgin Galactic Holding Carping for travel, has tied flights as precursors for the new era of space tourism, with the company he set up ready to start commercial operations next year.
Discount travel service is not.
But demand seems strong, with several hundred rich people astronauts have booked reservations, prices around $ 250,000 per ticket.
The Swiss-based investment bank UBS estimates the potential value of the space tourism market to reach $ 3 billion per year in 2030.
Proving a safe rocket journey for the general public is the key, given the inherent spaceflight hazards.
Previous prototypes from the Virgin Galactic rocket plane fell during a test flight in the Mojave California Desert in 2014, killing a pilot and seriously injured the others.
Branson’s participation in Sunday flights, announced more than a week ago, in accordance with his personality as a brave executive that the virgin brand – from airlines to a music company – has long been associated with exploitation of sailboats and hot air balloons.
The journey is also also medium to rivals Astro-Tourism Venture Blue Origin and its founders, Amazon Mogul Jeff Bezos, in what has been popularized as a “race of the billionaire space.” Bezos has planned to fly on its own suborbitral rocket, Shepard Baru, later this month.
Branson, a week from his 71st birthday, has insisted on him and Bezos was a friendly rival and was not involved in a personal contest to beat each other into space.
The third player, fellow billionaire owner of Elon Musk SpaceX, plans to send his first all-civilian crew (without musk) to orbit in September, after launching a lot of cargo and astronauts to the international spacecraft for NASA.
The launch of the VSS Galactic rocket plane on Sunday will mark flight test 2 to 22 of its spaceshiptwo system, and its fourth mission outside the Earth’s atmosphere.
But it would be the first to bring full praise from the room travelers – two pilots and four “mission specialists,” Branson among them.
Allows the weather, spaceplane white glittering will take off around 0900 ET (1300 GMT) on Sunday attached to the bottom of the Twin-Fuselage Jet VMS Eve carrier – named for Mrs.
Branson – from Spaceport America near the city of New Mexico truth or consequences , Virgin Galactic occupies a large part of the facility, about 75 miles (120 km) north of Las Cruces.
Split from Jet Carrier at a height of 50,000 feet, the pilot unity will turn on the rocket engine to send a spaceship shot in almost vertical climb to the darkness of around 55 miles high, where the crew will experience about 4 minutes of micro.
The vehicle engine will then be closed, and the craft will shift to the back mode and make the descendants glide to the runway on the spacecraft.
The whole flight, from taking off until it landed, it must take around 90 minutes.
The official role of Branson is to “evaluate the experience of personal astronauts,” and its observations will be used to “increase travel for all future astronaut customers,” according to Virgin’s press material.
Two spaceplane pilots, Dave Mackay and Michael Masucci, will control the ignition and closure of the ship’s rocket machine, and activate the “hairy” “hairy” tail maneuver to re-enter.
Three other mission specialists are Beth Moses, head of company astronauts; The main operating engineer Virgin Galactic Colin Bennett; And sirisha bandla, research operations and vice president of government affairs.
Assuming the mission went well, Virgin had a plan for two further test flights from Spaceplane before starting commercial services in 2022.