Commercial Space Flights
Posted August 1st, 2009 by simon
Virgin showed off their twin fuselage aircraft the other day. Dubbed WhiteKnightTwo it is intended to transport Virgin’s SpaceShipTwo up to 50,000 feet where it will detach and blast into space under its own power. The WhiteKnightTwo has flown 16 flights so far. The first commercial space flights are due to depart from the New Mexico, Spaceport America but Virgin have yet to confirm the dates. The lack of a solid schedule has not prevented them from taking $40 million in deposits from eager would be astronauts.
The second iteration of the plane and spacecraft were developed after customers said they wouldn’t be interested in paying out $200,000 a piece unless they could experience some weightlessness. The new spaceships will take six people each and will allow them to experience five minutes of weightlessness and view the earth from space before gliding back down to land. The whole flight should last around 2.5 hours. That makes it well over $1,000 per minute. Despite the high costs people are queuing up to get onboard and Virgin have confirmed over 300 reservations so far.
