Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic is scheduled to show off its newest spacecraft at an event here Friday, in what would mark a significant milestone for a company that suffered a fatal accident just over a year ago.
Advertisement
Its predecessor VSS Enterprise broke up over the Mojave Desert on 31 October 2014, when the movable tail boom feathers were inadvertently deployed prematurely, killing the co-pilot who made that mistake and seriously injuring the other pilot, who escaped by parachute.
Branson said it was “pretty cool to be taking people to space”, but also outlined several potential future projects for Virgin Galactic, including: high-speed point-to-point travel; helping to construct a replacement for the soon-to-be-defunct International Space Station; and protecting the Earth from large asteroids hurtling its way.
But first, the new spaceship will be put through a battery of ground-base tests.
Despite the setback, Sir Richard Branson said that after some soul searching the company chose to push ahead with its vision of sending commercial passengers into space.
“We would always remember the accident, but we would not be defined by it”, Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides said during the rollout. Eventually, the company envisions flights with six passengers climbing more than 62 miles above Earth.
“When we had the space accident, that gave us 24 hours of soul searching”, said billionaire Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Galactic parent Virgin Group of London at a Thursday panel discussion in downtown.
Virgin Galactic is among a handful of companies, including Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, Paul Allen’s Stratolaunch Systems and Boeing, planning to fly people in space. Nearly one of the $250,000 tickets.
Considering Virgin Galactic’s rather tumultuous timeline over the past 16 months, the fact the organization focused on testing should come as no surprise.
Testing on the SpaceShipTwo, which Branson said was constructed by a team of 650 engineers, will begin with the electrical system and moving parts, followed by flights attached to the WhiteKnightTwo mothership before progressing to glide testing.
Passengers on the first flight won’t be the first space tourists either.
It’s exciting to see Virgin Galactic’s handsome SpaceShipTwo back in action and fascinating to think that space tourism could be a real thing someday. “It was a moment when years of hard work were put into public doubt and the life of a courageous test pilot, a family man and a friend to many of us was lost”.
Advertisement
“We will send people to space once pilots have tested the ship time and time and time again”. “But today seems to be the right time to change that, as we are after all celebrating the birth of two gorgeous babies”.
