Although it may be awhile before cheap fares, whether cheap airplane tickets or cheap vacation packages, are available for travel into space, progress was made on Sunday, October 10th, when two Virgin Galactic pilots flew the worlds first manned commercial spaceship over Californias Mojave Desert.
Richard Branson, the driving force behind this program, viewed the successful completion of this test flight as a significant step forward in his dream of offering affordable space travel. Branson declared Now, the sky is no longer the limit and we will begin the process of pushing beyond to the final frontier of space itself over the next year.
The spaceship, named the VSS Enterprise, successfully completed a free flight from a mothership at 45,000 feet. The two primary goals of the flight were for the ship were to perform a clean release from its mothership and for the pilots to free fly and glide back to its destination in Southern California.
Virgin Galactic, a Branson company, sees itself becoming the worlds first commercial space line, currently holds 370 customer deposits totaling $50 million.
The long term plan is for the 60 foot long spaceship to be flown 60,000 feet above the planet by its carrier and then fire rockets to boost itself into space. This test program will continue through 11, initially free gliding and finally a powered flight prior to commercial flights beginning.
Virgin Galactic eventually wants to be making one flight into space weekly, with six passengers onboard. Initially the price for the ride will be $200,000 per traveler with passengers training for a minimum of three days before the trip. The current waiting list for seats includes almost 80,000 people.
While this form of travel may never be viewed as affordable by the typical traveler, it opens up space to hundreds of thousands of people, according to Branson, who could never have afforded prior space travel which cost upwards of $10 million per passenger.
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