14 DAY TRIAL // Next Monday, Virgin Galactic will unveil its new space plane design. Constructed specifically to deliver paying passengers to suborbital altitudes, at the fringes of outer space, the innovative craft, known as SpaceShipTwo, is bound to make a sensation. The luxurious vehicle will therefore be the base of the company's fleet, which it plans to construct and operate in the coming years. The company has been among the first to engage itself in such a project, and, if test flights are any indicator, it may have very well struck the jackpot, Space reports.
In charge of manufacturing the space plane is Scaled Composites, a company that operates out of the Mojave Air and Space Port, in California. This is also the most probable location for future SpaceShipTwo launches, officials at Virgin Galactic say. The new spacecraft banks on an impressive prototype, which won the $10-million Ansari X Prize a few years ago. SpaceShipOne was built entirely with private funds, but featured room for a single person. In 2004, the craft managed to perform a series of successful flights, demonstrating the basic design that underlines SpaceShipTwo as well.
British billionaire and knighted adventurer Sir Richard Branson is the main funding force behind the new spacecraft. Initially, SpaceShipOne was funded by more than $100 million from Microsoft Co-founder Paul Allen and others. The new design features room for six passengers and two pilots, and each set is valued at $200,000 per flight. There are at this point, Virgin confirms, more than 250 “astronauts” undergoing the training necessary to allow them to fly on the ship, and each and every one of them already has a reservation for a future suborbital flight.
“Everyone at Scaled is looking forward to the Virgin Galactic 'unveil event' on December 7. They look forward to seeing SpaceShipTwo join WhiteKnightTwo in the air over Mojave Spaceport as it conducts the critical flight tests under the direction of Flight Test Operations Chief Pete Siebold,” veteran aerospace designer Burt Rutan, who is the founder of Scale Composites and now the chief technology officer and chairman emeritus at the company, says. “The rollout symbolizes the reality of commercial space and the next era of space exploration, experimentation, and transportation,” the Executive Director of Spaceport America, Steve Landeene, concludes.