Virgin Galactic has unveiled its designs for the SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo (WK2) vehicles that will hurtle commercial passengers into space for the first time.
At the launch in New York, Virgin Galactic founder Sir Richard Branson, said: ”The designs of both the mothership and the new spaceship surpass my expectations for the future of commercial spaceflight that we had when first registering the name Virgin Galactic in 1999.
”We are looking forward to working with Pratt & Whitney and Virgin Fuels to trial an appropriate bio mix for the PW308A engines that will be powering our new carrier aircraft.”
It might sound like science fiction but the potential for commercial space flight is now very near. Construction of the WK2 mothership or carrier aircraft is very close to completion in Mojave, California and is expected to begin flight testing this summer.
Capable of putting SpaceShipTwo and its eight astronauts into sub-orbital space, WK2 can also lift other payloads using the four Pratt & Whitney engines.
Some 85,000 people have registered an interest in travelling into space, while 80 passengers have now completed medical assessment and centrifuge training at the NASTAR facility in Philadelphia. And flights cost a cool $200,000 (”102,000) per passenger.
Virgin says it will make further announcements concerning the progress of the launch system, market development, test flying programme and the start of commercial operations at Spaceport America, ”in due course.”
The launch of the spaceship design proved so extraordinarily popular in New York, that Virgin had to run two consecutive press conferences, so great was media interest in the project.
Branson has also previously told ABTN that his team of engineers could equally turn its skills to developing an aircraft capable of flying from London to Australia in one hour.
SpaceshipTwo Construction