Virgin Galactic 01 carried 13 research payloads and three crew members from the Italian Air Force and the National Research Council of Italy – congratulations to all the team. And congratulazioni ai membri dell’equipaggio Galactic 01.
Virgin Galactic was part of the revival of commercial space when they won the XPrize a suborbital flight.
Virgin Galactic is selling sells tickets for future space tours for $450,000.
Virgin Galactic said Unity topped out its flight at an altitude of nearly 52.9 miles (85.1 km). At the apex of the flight, with the rocket shut down, the crew experienced a few minutes of weightlessness before the craft shifted into re-entry mode and began its gliding descent back to Earth
Virgin Galactic will now start post-flight inspections and analysis in preparation for its next commercial space mission, Galactic 02. That will be a very special moment, when the team brings its unique experience to private astronauts. That mission is scheduled for August, with Virgin Galactic planning monthly flights to space beginning thereafter.
Virgin Galactic included an in Memoriam tribute to Evan Lovell, Virgin Galactic’s Chairman and Virgin Management’s Chief Investment Officer.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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I share the sentiment of most of the people here. I’ve always felt that if you can reach LEO, then you have truly left the earth, and are now in the new frontier. But if you merely reach the altitude of LEO, but with a suborbital velocity, then you haven’t really left the earth, and are still at home.
Suborbital doesn’t seem like “real” outer space, regardless of whether you’re above the Karman Line.
Meh. They need to find a better way to get a commercial version of X37B to LEO outside of its protective fairing so as to be a quick-launch, re-usable, and conventional (sort of) landing vehicle.
Are you saying that the SR-71 and U2 planes flew above the Karman line?
i have a premonition that this particular endeavor will end up in a disaster. Anyway they had too many disasters during the development stage.
As far as I’m concerned, If I take off at noon, and moments later I look out my window and see
a black sky, and I’m floating…..I’m in space.
Awhile back I heard about an idea to accelerate a suborbital ship to orbit using a magnetic catch onto a long tether attached to a large mass in orbit. The inertia lost by acceleration of the suborbital ship can be replaces slowly and efficiently. If briefly made me a bit more optimistic about suborbital eventually developing useful technology but that optimism has faded over time.
I’m not going to call this glorified Vomit Comet a “space ship”. As far as I’m concerned, it’s like saying somebody who dips their toe in water is a seafarer.
I actually thought “vomit comet,” myself. It’s technically pretty cool that they’ve finally pulled it off, but it doesn’t make orbit. Therefore, it’s not a spaceship.
It’s a project that was created by a retired person with a 50-60’s technical approach , with that way of thinking having a reusable suborbital designed in the 80’s could be revolutionary…then, Mr. Rutan was the right man in the wrong moment
Space X and reusable rockets move the equation to next level and now a 450,000 ride to suborbital looks as a very expensive amusement park ride
It’s taken so long that because of SpaceX Starship, we have the real thing – genuine commercial space travel, about to happen. That takes some the sting out of the “make-believe” space travel this and Blue Origin’s Dildoe rocket represent.