Includes an Olympian who brought ticket 18 years ago, and a mother-daughter duo Virgin Galactic rocketed to the edge of space with its first tourists Thursday, a former British Olympian who bought his ticket 18 years ago and a mother-daughter duo from the Caribbean. The rocket-powered VSS Unity craft dropped from the carrier plane over New Mexico around 9:20 a.m. local time and blasted its four passengers, a company instructor and three tourists, to an altitude of roughly 55 miles (88.51 km). Virgin Galactic's mothership Eve, carrying the rocket-powered plane Unity 22, takes off from Spaceport America, near Truth or Consequences, N.M., Thursday, Aug. 10, 2023. (AP Photo/Andrés Leighton) The space plane glided back to a runway landing at Spaceport America in the New Mexico dese...
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Virgin Galactic rocket plane poised for first commercial flight to edge of space
A twin-fuselage jet stood ready on Thursday to carry a Virgin Galactic rocket plane with a three-man crew from Italy into the New Mexico sky for a high-altitude launch of the company's first flight of paying customers to the edge of space. The two Italian air force colonels and an aerospace engineer from the National Research Council of Italy were due to join their Virgin Galactic instructor and the spaceplane's two pilots on a suborbital ride expected to take the six men about 50 miles (80 km) above the desert floor. The flight marks a decisive moment for Virgin Galactic Holding Inc, the space tourism venture founded by British billionaire Richard Branson in 2004, as it inaugurates commercial service following several years fraught with development setbacks. FILE PHOTO: Virgin G...
Read MoreDecades after burnishing his reputation as a wealthy daredevil mogul in a series of boating and hot-air balloon expeditions, Richard Branson is poised to promote his burgeoning astro-tourism venture by launching himself to the final frontier. Branson's Virgin Galactic Holding Inc is due on Sunday to send the company's passenger rocket plane, the VSS Unity, on its first fully crewed test flight to the edge of space, with the British billionaire founder among the six individuals strapping in for the ride. The gleaming white spaceplane will be borne by a twin-fuselage carrier jet dubbed VMS Eve (named for Branson's mother) to an altitude of 50,000 feet, where Unity will be released and soar by rocket power in an almost vertical climb through the outer fringe of Earth's atmosphere. ...
Read MoreThree billionaire entrepreneurs - Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Richard Branson - are each vying to usher in a new era of private commercial space travel. Here is how their rival ventures compare in the race to open up space travel. TICKETS Bezos, Branson and Musk have been investing billions of dollars in their space startups, each promising to ferry paying customers on rides to space - and it will cost a pretty penny to be part of it. Branson's Virgin Galactic is reported to have more than 600 ticket reservations already, priced around $250,000. It expects to begin a full commercial service in 2022 and eventually hopes to slash the ticket price to around $40,000. FILE PHOTO: Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos addresses the media about the New Shepard rocket booster an...
Read MoreBillionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson will travel to the edge of space on Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc's test flight on July 11, Branson's space tourism firm said on Thursday, beating out fellow aspiring billionaire astronaut Jeff Bezos. A successful flight by Branson aboard Virgin's VSS Unity spaceplane would mark a key milestone in a race to usher in a new era of private commercial space travel. It would also mean that Branson would travel beyond Earth's atmosphere ahead of Bezos, the founder of rival space tourism venture Blue Origin. Bezos, who founded retail giant Amazon.com Inc, is slated to fly to space on July 20 along with his brother, Mark, trailblazing female pilot Wally Funk and a so-far unidentified person who plunked down $28 million to join the suborbital jo...
Read MoreBillionaire Richard Branson's spaceship company Virgin Galactic said on Friday it received approval from the U.S. aviation safety regulator to fly people to space, turning up the pressure on rivals in the nascent and expensive space tourism sector. The company's shares surged as much as 40% to $56.40, their highest since February, after more than doubling in value this year. FILE PHOTO: Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo flies over the Mojave Desert in California April 29, 2013 REUTERS/Gene Blevins The approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) comes at a critical time for Branson as his space venture faces off against Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Tesla Inc boss Elon Musk's SpaceX. Bezos, Branson and Musk have been investing billions of dollars on th...
Read MoreFlying at Mach 3 and reaching more than 55 miles above the Earth Saturday, British billionaire Sir Richard Branson's private spaceship company Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc completed its first manned space flight from its new home port in New Mexico. This is a milestone in Branson's near two-decades effort to create a commercial "spaceline" to take paying customers into outer space. Touted as the first human spaceflight from the state, Branson's SpaceShipTwo craft lifted off in the desert about 45 miles northeast of Las Cruces, New Mexico, about 10:35 a.m. About 50 minutes later, traveling at more than 2,300 miles an hour, it reached a height NASA recognizes as space and attained suborbital flight status. "Welcome to space" the company posted on Twitter. !function...
Read MoreRichard Branson’s Virgin Hyperloop has completed the world’s first passenger ride on a super high-speed levitating pod system, a key safety test for technology it hopes will transform human and cargo transportation, however it will still be atleast a decade before the public can potentially take a high-speed ride on a hyperloop. Transportation history was made on Sunday in the Nevada desert, where Virgin Hyperloop tested human travel in a hyperloop pod for the first time. Virgin Hyperloop executives Josh Giegel, its Chief Technology Officer, and Sara Luchian, Director of Passenger Experience, reached speeds of up to 107 miles per hour (172 km per hour) at the company’s DevLoop test site in Las Vegas, Nevada, the company said. They sat in Virgin Hyperloop's two-person pod, which include...
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