Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Spaceship Two is out of the Hangar!


Commercial Spaceflight for the Rest of Us: Congratulations to Virgin Galactic from The Launch Pad by Stiles
By Peter H. Diamandis
Chairman/CEO, X PRIZE Foundation
Today Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites will roll out SpaceShipTwo (SS2) a commercial passenger carrying spaceship derived from the winning ship which captured the $10M Ansari X PRIZE for spaceflight in 2004. While SpaceShipOne (SS1) carried only one pilot and two passengers, the much larger SS2 will be flown by two pilots with seats for six paying passengers.
Five years ago, 20,000 people gathered at the Mojave Air & Space Port to watch as Burt Rutan and his team at Scaled Composites, backed by Paul Allen, accomplished what many considered impossible – building and flying a privately funded, privately piloted spaceship, twice, to altitudes above 100 kilometers. On that fateful day, October 4th, when the ship successfully flew its second flight into space, it carried on it the Virgin Logo and a pledge from Richard Branson to fund a commercial version to carry the paying public into space. Well, here we are. The commercial version is now built and will soon start test flights. While the project is a few years behind schedule, it has made incredible strides. Branson and Will Whitehorn (the CEO of Virgin Galactic) have committed hundreds of millions of dollars to get it to this point and everyone is the space community is very thankful. ...

Commercial spaceship roll-out revs space tourism - NetworkWorld.com
The current launch aircraft, WhiteKnightTwo, made a splash this summer by flying at the Experimental Aircraft Association's annual AirVenture air show in ...

Virgin Galactic Unveils Spaceshiptwo from RLV and Space Transport News
A press release from Virgin Galactic:
Virgin Galactic Unveils Spaceshiptwo, The World'S First Commercial Manned Spaceship
SpaceShipTwo (SS2) and its mothership, WhiteKnightTwo (WK2) herald a new era in commercial space flight with daily space tourism flights set to commence from Spaceport America in New Mexico after test program and all required US government licensing completed.
...Virgin Founder, Sir Richard Branson and SpaceshipOne (SS1) designer, Burt Rutan, today reveal SS2 to the public for the first time since construction of the world's first manned commercial spaceship began in 2007. SS2 has been designed to take many thousands of private astronauts into space after test programming and all required U.S. government licensing has been completed.
The unveiling represents another major milestone in Virgin Galactic's quest to develop the World's first commercial space line providing private sector access to space using an environmentally benign launch system for people, payload and science. The spaceship draws on the experience developed during the successful flights of SS1 in 2004, which won the Ansari X-Prize for completing the world's first manned private space flights. The SS2 design will be refined and completed during an extensive test flying program to commence shortly, and it will be an entirely new vehicle capable of carrying up to 6 passenger astronauts and up to 2 pilot astronauts into space on a sub-orbital flight. ...

For further information go to www.virgingalactic.com

For downloadable images and graphics go to: www.virgingalactic.com/SS2Unveil

WK2/SS2 on view from RLV and Space Transport News

Coverage by Hperbola:
More Pictures:


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