Virgin Atlantic Airlines? No – Virgin Galactic Spacelines.
The first spaceline the world has ever seen.
Space travel will soon be possible for non-professional astronauts – as long as you have at least $200,000 USD and are ready to pay a deposit of $20,000. Virgin Galactic is a company started by Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, known for its global initiatives and products like Virgin Holidays, Virgin Music Festivals, Virgin Megastore and Virgin Mobile, and many more.
Virgin Galactic has teamed up with NASA, space travel entrepreneur Paul G. Allen, and aviation designer Burt Rutan to make possible space tourism – scheduled to launch its first flight this year in 2008. Its shuttles, SpaceShipOne, SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo are well advanced in their testing.
The vision of Virgin Galactic has been to rid the world of the exclusivity and barriers of traditional space flight. They hope to make space travel available to everyone, as traditional airplane flights have become in the past few centuries – without compromising any safety issues.
Interested?
Beam me up, Scotty!
Those interested in Virgin Galactic’s space flights require 3 days of pre-flight preparation, relationship-building and training at their home base in New Mexico. You’ll learn how to make the most of your time in zero gravity and get other tips of what to expect. Pre-flight medical checks may be required but health restrictions should not be any more stringent than those for a normal airplane flight.
Currently, travel agents from all over the world are being handpicked to take part in Virgin Galactic’s Accredited Space Agents program to become a travel agent for Virgin Galactic, or rather, a “Space Agent.”
The Flight
The flight will take those on board to sub-space, just on the edge of space, outside of Earth’s atmosphere.
The spaceship is attached to a “mother ship,” that is designed as a jet carrier aircraft. The WhiteKnightTwo is one of these jet carrier “mother ships.” Once at 50,000 feet, the space ship is detaches from the mother ship and is rocketed into space to over 360,000 feet into the very edge of space at almost 2500 mph, which is over 3 times the speed of sound.
At this point, the ship will stay in the weightless, zero-gravity, completely silent orbit for 5 minutes before returning back into the Earth’s atmosphere and its surface. The trip is estimated to take approximately 2.5 hours.
Future plans of Virgin Galactic include flying through Aurora Borealis.
For more information on Virgin Galactic, please visit: http://www.virgingalactic.com