Virgin's Starship Enterprise
Posted by Greg at 05:43, 08 Dec 2009Five years ago, SpaceShipOne entered history by becoming the first privately funded human spaceflight, winning the $10million Ansari X-Prize in the process. Today, the next step in the evolution of commercial spaceflight took place with Virgin Galactic's public unveiling of SpaceShipTwo, also known as the VSS Enterprise. Our good friend Alan Boyle was at the event, and has posted a comprehensive write-up on Cosmic Log, with plenty of insights into Richard Branson's thoughts about the project:
Branson is spending an estimated $250 million to $400 million on his space venture. The company already has signed up more than 300 would-be spacefliers, including actress Victoria Principal, Hollywood director Bryan Singer and 90-year-old enviro-theorist James Lovelock. Paralyzed cosmologist Stephen Hawking, who sampled zero-G two years ago, may eventually fly as well.
The price for a three-day space tour package, including training, is $200,000.
Is there enough of a market for space travel to allow Branson to recover his investment? "To be perfectly honest, I'm not too worried if I make money or not," he told our NBC News crew today during a tour of SpaceShipTwo's hangar in advance of tonight's ceremony. He said his prime concern was to create something he's proud of, and have faith that any venture that inspires his pride will end up attracting customers and making money.
Heaps more details at Cosmic Log, go check it out. Also worth looking at is this slideshow and the Virgin website. And if you're on Twitter, it's well worth following Alan (@b0yle) for up-to-the-minute news and comment on various space and science related topics.
And for a good insight into the human factor of developing a craft like this (one that, literally, travels faster than a bullet), check out this documentary on SpaceShipOne's third flight:
As Alan points out in his piece, it's worth noting the difference in size to the new vehicle.
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Comments
22 November 2004
3 days 7 hours
I would love to go on a short ride with this thing, even just as a passenger.
But I'm not wealthy enough. $200K is more than I make in a month. Maybe next year.
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No amount of cursing at the round earth will make it flat.
12 April 2007
5 hours 41 min
Presumido! ;)
It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
1 May 2004
4 weeks 2 days
You never know. If this works as a business enterprise who knows where it might lead. If we look at computers in the 1970s and compare them those we have today we have seen a dramatic increase in power and a dramatic decrease in cost - maybe everyone will be flying to the moon by 2030. I hope to be a sprightly 59 and with smart drugs, magick and optimism keeping me alive hope to be whizzing in orbit in my lifetime
Of course I would really like to travel in comfort with a luxury TARDIS....
http://www.spectrallight.net
22 November 2004
3 days 7 hours
Quite true. We will never know unless someone starts. So Branson and Rutan and their people are doing the right thing. And compared to a ride on a Soyuz, this is dirt cheap.
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No amount of cursing at the round earth will make it flat.
12 April 2007
5 hours 41 min
Being used to images of NASA technicians working on space hardware dressed in those funny antiseptic white coveralls, and then watching those images of the Scaled Composites' employees —with their jeans and T-shirs— joining together the parts of this novel machine, as if it were some huge DIY home project (which is esentially what SpaceShipTwo really is) brings me hope and concern both at the same time.
It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie