Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo is scheduled to make its debut flight in 2009
Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson and Scaled Composites CEO Burt Rutan showed off their new design for SpaceShipTwo. Billed as the worlds first commercial suborbital spacecraft, SpaceShipTwo will take travelers to the edge of the universe. Well, not quite the edge of the universe but the edge of outer space. The inaugural flight will contain about 100-200 wealthy travelers who have reserved a $200,000 seat aboard the craft.
SpaceShipTwo has a 42-foot wingspan and a tail height of 15 feet. It’s covered in windows with 18-inch diameters so that Virgin Galactic travelers will be able to have a full view of space and the Earth below them as they experience zero gravity. They’ve paid $200,000 for between four and five minutes of weightlessness, so they’d better have a darned good view.
SpaceShipTwo (in the middle of the picture) will be mounted on its “mother ship,” WhiteKnightTwo. The WhiteKnightTwo aircraft is a high-altitude aircraft that will taxi SpaceShipTwo to the upper atmosphere where it will detach. The process known as an “air launch” is said to be much more “green”per passenger than a typical commercial flight and safer too.
