Thaindian News

Mar 24 (THAINDIAN NEWS) In what the manufacturer, Virgin has called a “momentous day,” the first ever commercial spacecraft flight was launched yesterday morning (Mar 23) and was called a “smashing success.” The land of the “Jetson’s” may be a bit closer to reality, although that is still many years in the future.

British billionaire Richard Branson’s company, Virgin Galactic built the aircraft, first named the SpaceShip Two and then renamed the VSS Enterprise. It has long been a dream of Branson to travel in space. The maiden flight of the Enterprise, called a captive carry flight, took place over the Mojave Desert in California.

“The captive carry flight signifies the start of what we believe will be extremely exciting and successful spaceship flight test program,” said Burt Rutan, founder of Scaled Composites, which built the spacecraft.

The Enterprise stayed hooked up to the carrier for the entire flight, which lasted 2 hours, and 54 minutes. It flew to an altitude of 45,000 feet, and is 60 feet long. The goal is to eventually have the ship reach 60,000 feet, above the Earth by the carrier, and fire rockets in order to shoot itself into space.

The dream of Virgin Galactic is to one day have one flight a week, with six tourists to each flight. The cost for such a trip? $200,000. There would be a three day training period before being allowed to fly, and there have already been 80,000 Earthlings who added their names to the waiting list for seats on the flight.

“What we want to be able to do is bring space travel down to a price range where hundreds of thousands of people would be able to experience space, and they never dreamed that they could,” Branson said.