Virgin Galactic sits in New Mexico, a new stage in commercial flight

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The manufacture of space vehicles by a sister company, The Spaceship Company, will remain based in the community of Mojave, California.

The long way to Virgin Galactic

Taxpayers have invested more than $ 200 million in Spaceport America after Branson, then Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat, presented the plan for the facility, with Virgin Galactic as the main tenant.

The development of the Virgin Galactic spacecraft took much longer than expected and suffered a major setback when the company's first experimental gear crashed on a test flight in 2014, killing the co-pilot.

Branson thanked politicians and New Mexicans for their patience over the past decade. He said that he thought that space tourism – once at altitude – would bring about profound changes.

"Our future success as a species is based on a global perspective," said Branson. "The perspective we know becomes clear when this planet is seen from the black sky of space."

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Branson described a vision of hotels in space and a network of space stations allowing supersonic and transcontinental travel anywhere on the Earth in a matter of hours. He said, however, that the financial viability of construction comes first.

"We need the financial momentum to do all that," he said. "If the space program succeeds as I think … then the sky is the limit."

& # 39; Like a free fall in a park of attractions & # 39;

In February, a new version of Virgin Galactic's winged craft, SpaceShipTwo, climbed three times faster than the sound at an altitude of nearly 99 km during a test flight over- Southern California, while a member of the crew was soaked in the experience.

On Friday, this crew member, Beth Moses, recounted her journey into weightlessness and the visual spectacle of dark space and earth.

"Everything is silent and motionless and you can detach and float in the cabin," she said. "Images do not make the view of space justice. … I will be able to see him forever. "

The current spaceship of the company does not start from the ground. It is transported by a special aircraft at an altitude of approximately 15,240 meters (50,000 feet) before detaching and igniting its rocket engine.

"Liberation is like a free fall in a park of attractions, except that it continues," said Moses. "And then the rocket engine lights up. Before you know it, you are supersonic. "

The craft skirts the summit of its climb before descending gradually to the ground, stabilized by a "feathering" technology in which the two tails turn upwards to increase the drag on the path leading to the landing. ;landing.

First suborbital flight

Previously, Branson wanted to make his first suborbital flight this year as one of the company's first passengers on the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing on July 20th. But he made no mention of deadlines on Friday.

Pressed on the schedule, Whitesides said it was planning the first commercial flight in a year.

Three people with future space flight bookings were part of the public.

"They have been patient too," said Branson. "The space is difficult."

Hundreds of potential customers have already committed up to $ 250,000 in Virgin's six-passenger rocket, which is about the size of a jet.

Increase in the interest of space tourism

Space tourism is not a complete novelty since millionaire Dennis Tito, an American engineer in 2001, paid $ 20 million to participate in a Russian space mission to the International Space Station. Branson's goal is to "democratize" space by opening trips to a growing number of people.

The project began in 2004 when Branson announced the creation of Virgin Galactic in the heady days following the flights of SpaceShipOne, the first privately funded inhabited spacecraft that flew three flights in space.

Adam Jonas, Space Analyst, Managing Director of Equity Research at Morgan Stanley, said Branson's initiative could have a disproportionate impact in the social media age on how the public views space as a field of scientific and commercial exploration.

"You bring them back to earth and they explain what they saw – it's a story people want to hear, through the speed of social media," he said. "Sometimes it takes a little distance to get a perspective, to see the Earth from space, to see how thin this layer of atmosphere is and how it protects us."

Branson's plans have progressively progressed in the context of greater private investment in space technologies, with innovations to reduce the costs of reusable rockets and microsatellite technology.

Amazon mogul Jeff Bezos announced on Thursday that his space company Blue Origin would send a robotic spacecraft to the moon with the aspirations of another ship that could bring people there in the same time as the return proposed by NASA for 2024. Bezos has not provided any details on the launch dates.

TO CLOSE

Virgin Galactic says its rocket plane has reached space for the second time during a test flight over California. The spacecraft was carrying two pilots and a third crew member to assess the cabin from the passengers' point of view. (February 22)
AP

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