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Richard Branson finally makes his space trip on Sunday.
It’s been a very long wait for Mr Branson, the irreverent 70-year-old British billionaire who runs a galaxy of Virgin companies. In 2004, he founded Virgin Galactic to provide adventurous tourists with rides in rocket-propelled planes to the edge of space and back.
At the time, he thought the sales service would start in two or three years. Instead, almost 17 years have passed. Virgin Galactic says it still has three test flights to complete, including Sunday’s, before it can be ready to pay passengers.
For this flight, Mr. Branson will be part of the crew. Its task is to assess the cabin experience for future customers.
When is the flight, and how can I watch it?
The flight is scheduled to take off Sunday morning from Spaceport America in New Mexico, about 180 miles south of Albuquerque.
Virgin will broadcast coverage of the flight starting at 9 a.m. Eastern Time with Stephen Colbert hosts the livestream. Singer Khalid is set to perform a new song after the crew land, and Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, has suggested he can make an appearance.
What is the Virgin Galactic space plane and what will it do?
The rocket plane, a type called SpaceShipTwo, is about the size of a business jet. In addition to the two pilots, there will be four people in the cabin. This particular SpaceShipTwo is named VSS Unity.
To take off, Unity is transported by a larger aircraft to an altitude of about 50,000 feet. There, Unity will be released and the rocket plane’s engine will ignite. Acceleration will cause those on board to feel a force up to 3.5 times their normal weight on the way to an altitude of over 50 miles.
At the top of the arch, those on board will be able to rise from their seats and experience approximately four minutes of apparent weightlessness. Of course, they won’t actually have escaped gravity. At fifty miles above sea level, the gravitational pull down from the Earth is essentially as strong as it is on the ground; on the contrary, the passengers will fall at the same rate as the plane around them.
The two tail booms at the rear of the spacecraft rotate to a “feathered” configuration that creates more drag and stability, allowing the aircraft to enter Earth’s atmosphere more smoothly. This configuration makes SpaceShipTwo more of a badminton shuttlecock, which always falls with the pointed side facing down, than an airplane.
However, the forces felt by the passengers on the descent will be greater than on the ascent, reaching six times the force of gravity.
Once the aircraft is back in the atmosphere, the tail booms return downward and the aircraft will hover until a landing. The complete flight can take less than two hours.
Who are the crew members on board the flight?
The pilots are David Mackay and Michael Masucci.
In addition to Mr. Branson, three Virgin Galactic employees will assess the experience of future paying customers. They are Beth Moses, the chief astronaut instructor; Colin Bennett, Chief Operating Engineer; and Sirisha Bandla, vice president of government affairs and research operations. Ms. Bandla will also conduct a science experiment provided by the University of Florida.
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