Virgin Galactic's VSS Enterprise makes maiden flight
 

Screw all this health care talk....THIS is history in the making.

Virgin Galactic spaceship makes first test flight | Reuters

http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?...SPACE-BUSINESS

(Reuters) - A suborbital spaceship owned by aspiring space tourism operator Virgin Galactic was airlifted into the skies over California's Mojave Desert on Monday for its debut test flight.

Science
The sleek, six-passenger ship, called VSS Enterprise, remained attached to its carrier aircraft throughout the two-hour, 54-minute flight.

Virgin Galactic, an offshoot of billionaire Richard Branson's London-based Virgin Group, has collected about $45 million in deposits and fares from more than 330 aspiring amateur astronauts, each of whom will be charged $200,000 to experience a few minutes of suborbital spaceflight.

Enterprise was designed and built by Burt Rutan, founder of Mojave-based Scaled Composites, now a wholly owned subsidiary of Northrop Grumman.

"Watching VSS Enterprise fly for the first time really brings home what beautiful, ground-breaking vehicles Burt and his team have developed for us," Branson said in a statement.

Test flights are scheduled through 2011, with commercial operations targeted to begin in 2012.

Enterprise is closely modeled on a prototype suborbital spaceship named SpaceShipOne, which won a $10 million prize for the first privately financed manned spaceflights in 2004. It is now in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.

(Editing by Tom Brown)

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that twin fuselage carrier is really interesting!


I hope to be able to visit space one day.....thanks RB!

Agreed...this is real news, and far more important to our country and humanity than another pork-stuffed piece of legislation from our bloated bureaucracy. Awesome!

looks cool. what a ride that would be

Indeed. Screw going to the moon, lets see who can get there and back the fastest.

If I had the cash, I would be on that trip.

I'd be right behind you, man!

This is awesome!

this is on my TO DO list before I die!

:nono::big_grin:


even though it`s ugly as sin and has small windows it will do the job and I`d definitely like to get my ass up that high in my life...but not for that much $$

This is insane, Branson is the man, plain and simple!