Space tourists get first glimpse of their mothership

Those wealthy or lucky enough to hold the first £100,000 plus tickets for rides into space were shown their spacecraft for the first time this week at a ceremony held in California's Mojave desert.

Sir Richard Branson unveiled the craft, named SpaceShipTwo, which will take the space tourists into near-earth orbit for a trip lasting two-and-a-half hours.

Branson's company Virgin Galactic has sold some 300 tickets for the first trips into space, though no date for blast off has been fixed.

The rocket-powered SpaceShipTwo will be carried to an altitude of about 50,000ft by a conventional aircraft, WhiteKnightTwo. It will then break free and use a single hybrid rocket to blast into the thermosphere at a speed of 4,200km per hour.

The two-pilot spacecraft will carry six passengers at a time. They will experience about five minutes of weightlessness and they will be able to see the curvature of the Earth from portholes next to their seats, or unbuckle and float around the cabin.

SpaceShipTwo's flights will set-off from Spaceport America"" in New Mexico which will also be their landing spots.

Ultimately, Virgin Galactic plans to have five spaceships and launch vehicles, though trips into space are not for the faint-hearted or nervous flyers.

Not only will there be considerable turbulence during the flight but the developers have admitted the earliest tourist spacecraft will only be about as safe as the first commercial aircraft, which were considerably less reliable than modern planes.

Digg    Reddit    Facebook    Tweet This