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Virgin Galactic is an American spaceflight company, which is part of the Virgin Group. It was founded by Richard Branson and Burt Rutan in 2005. Their aim is to build commercial spaceships and launch aircraft for travelling in space. The main reasons for interest in space crafts were suborbital spaceflights for tourists and science missions. For one ticket for a space journey, passenger of a space ship will pay $250,000 for a 90 minute trip. The price is relatively low, if we compare it to the millions of dollars, previous space travellers payed e.g. Dennis Tito who paid 20 million dollars for his one in 2001.
In July 2007 during testing of SpaceShipTwo components three employees were killed due to the nitrous oxide. The company originally thought the first maiden flight (first independent flight) will be in 2009. Unfortunately the big date was postponed several times. During the tests situations like burning engines or not reaching sufficient altitude delayed the plans almost ten years.
At 7:24 a.m. PT WhiteKnightTwo – carrying SpaceShipTwo Unity took off from Spaceport America. First tourist-carrying spacelane aborted for a test. It reached the altitude of 9.4 miles (15km). Although it may seem positive, unfortunately shortly after decoupling the rocket motor lost connection. The spaceship should decouple from it before its rocket fires into sub-orbital space at the altitude of 50 miles. Sadly due to the issue, the rocket have been turned back home.
ABORT! VMS Eve released Unity, but engine shutdown shortly after ignition.https://t.co/iCQ11JFAZn pic.twitter.com/6S5LCrNuE6
— Chris B – NSF (@NASASpaceflight) December 12, 2020
After all these failed tests, disasters and of course COVID-19 pandemic issues company aims to have two more test flights from the same base in New Mexico. Company’s also hoping to have sent their customers to space by the end of the current year. This may not be very convincing a test, but it pushed forward the Virgin Galactic’s project and helped us realize, how close we could be to finally start developing space tourism.
https://news.sky.com/story/virgin-galactic-aborts-test-air-launch-of-its-tourist-carrying-spaceplane-12159057
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/12/tech/virgin-galactic-test-flight-scn/index.html
https://www.cnet.com/news/virgin-galactic-pilots-have-new-spacesuits-for-a-trip-to-space-this-month/