PC ProSchools – TechTalk

Virgin Galactic is a company within Sir Richard Branson‘s Virgin Group which plans to provide sub-orbital spaceflights to the paying public, along with suborbital space science missions and orbital launches of small satellites. Further in the future Virgin Galactic hopes to offer orbital human spaceflights as well

It is planned that the spacecraft are to be robust and affordable enough to take paying passengers ($200,000 per person with a $20,000 deposit). The craft is projected to be an eight passenger, two pilot craft. Its planned trajectory will overlap the Earth’s atmosphere at 70,000 feet (21,000 m), which will make it a sub orbital journey with a short period of weightlessness. At around 16 kilometers or 52,000 ft (16,000 m), the rocket will separate when the plane reaches its maximum height. The time from liftoff of the White Knight II booster carrying Spaceship Two until the touchdown of Spaceship Two after the suborbital flight will be about 2.5 hours. The suborbital flight itself will only be a small fraction of that time. The weightlessness will last approximately 6 minutes. Passengers will be able to release themselves from their seats during these 6 minutes and float around the cabin. In addition to the suborbital passenger business, Virgin Galactic will market Spaceship Two for suborbital space science missions and market WhiteKnight Two for “small satellite” launch services. They plan to initiate request for proposals for the satellite business in early 2010.

Spaceship Two will fly higher than Spaceship One, to a height of 110 km in order to go beyond the defined boundary of space (100 km) and lengthen the experience of weightlessness. The spacecraft will reach around Mach 3 (1000 m/s), which is faster than current fighter jets are capable of reaching. The spacecraft will not be able to sustain that speed for long periods of time. It has doubled the crew (2) and can carry triple the passengers (6) of its predecessor. In honor of the science fiction series “Star Trek”, the first two ships are named in honor of the fictional starships “Enterprise” and “Voyager”. To re-enter the atmosphere Spaceship Two folds its wings up, and then returns them to their original position for a smooth and gentle glide back onto the runway. The craft has a very limited cross-range capability and until other planned spaceports are built worldwide, it has to land in the area where it started. Further “Spaceports” are planned in Dubai and elsewhere, with the intention that the space line will have a world-wide availability and commodity in the future.

Trackback URI |