The first private spaceship to carry crew in suborbital flight

Jul 17, 2010 08:54 GMT  ·  By

The ship did not try to reach space on this first flight, it remained at a suborbital level, over the California's Mojave Desert and under the protection of its WhiteKnightTwo VMS Eve mother ship. The VSS Enterprise is a commercial spacecraft, part of the Virgin Galactic fleet of SpaceShipTwo.

The spacecraft flew for 6 hours and 12 minutes and officials said that this test flight was a big success. The Eve mother ship is designed to carry SpaceShipTwo at a over 15,240 meters in altitude, before the ship can launch itself into suborbital space. The SpaceShipTwo can carry up to eight people, including two crew members on suborbital flights, reaching also outer space for a couple of minutes.

The company Virgin Galactic was created in 2004 by Virgin group owner and British billionaire Sir Richard Branson. SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo were built by Scaled Composites, a company founded in 1982 by Burt Rutan, located in Mojave, California. Burt Rutan not only designed the SpaceShipOne for Virgin, but he was also the designer of the legendary Voyager, the first aircraft to circle the world non-stop, without refueling. Scaled Composites built the SpaceShipTwo's predecessor, co-financed by Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft. The project won the $10 million Ansari X Prize in 2004.

Thursday was the 33rd flight of the VMS Eve mother ship and the third capt flight for Enterprise. At this joint flight took part Mark Stucky, Peter Kalogiannis and Brian Maisler for the mother ship's crew, and Peter Siebold and Michael Alsbury for piloting the VSS Enterprise. For future space tourism flights, Virgin Galactic is building a new terminal at Spaceport America in New Mexico. Being a passenger of the spaceship might certainly be a one-in-a-lifetime experience but it is surely not accessible to anyone, tickets costing $200,000 per person.

No need to specify that the name of the VSS Enterprise was given by the all-popular TV series “Star Trek”.