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Space travel with Virgin Galactic is here!

Posted on Tue, 18 March 2008 10:34:34

Virgin Galactic is a company owned and established by Richard Branson's Virgin Group to undertake the challenge of making private space travel available to everyone and by creating the world's first commercial spaceline.

Virgin will own and operate privately built spaceships, based on the history making SpaceShipOne . These spaceships, which are currently under construction, will allow affordable private sub-orbital space travel for the first time in history and give you the opportunity of being amongst the very first private astronauts.

How frequent will the flights be?
Initially, there will be one flight per week. As operations progress, this will increase to one and potentially two flights per day.


How many passengers and pilots will there be on each flight?
SpaceShipTwo will carry 6 astronaut passengers and two pilots.

What does the space flight consist of?
The spaceship hitches a ride up to around 50,000 feet attached to a specially designed carrier aircraft, 'the mothership'. Once at 50,000 feet, the spaceship is released from the mothership and ignites its hybrid rocket. The spaceship then begins a climb from 50,000 feet to over 360,000 feet. This climb takes about 90 seconds and will reach a speed of just over 3 times the speed of sound. Shortly before the apogee (maximum altitude) of its flight path, the spaceship feathers (folds its wings) in preparation for re-entry into the earth's atmosphere, drawn by the Earth's gravitational pull. As the spaceship meets the resistance of the upper atmosphere, the feathered wings act as air brakes, safely positioning and decelerating the spaceship allowing for a carefree re-entry into the earths atmosphere. At approximately 60,000 feet, the spaceship's wings are re-configured into their original position allowing for an unpowered (glide) landing back at the spaceport.

What is feathering?
In the past, re-entry into the earth's atmosphere was one of the greatest risks associated with space travel. However, Burt Rutan's ingenious feathering design has significantly reduced this risk. In space, the wings are folded up to provide a shuttle-cock or "feather" effect giving the spaceship extremely high drag for reentry. This allows the reentry deceleration to occur at a higher altitude and greatly reduces the forces and heating on the structure. Also, the ship, in the feathered configuration, will align itself automatically such that the pilot has a less-critical flight control task. Burt Rutan describes this as "care-free reentry". Once in contact with the atmosphere, the feathered wings position the vehicle to the correct altitude without pilot input.

What is the difference between a Virgin Galactic spaceship and a NASA shuttle?
A lot! To be fair, the Space Shuttle was designed to carry significant payloads and people into orbit rather than people only into sub-orbit. However there are some key design differences which represent important developments in the future of safe and commercially viable space travel. Firstly, SpaceShipTwo is being built from composite materials not metal, creating major benefits in weight, power output requirements and resilience. Secondly, the feathering mechanism (described above) means that these spacecraft do not require specially designed (and historically unreliable) thermal protection systems used by the Space Shuttle. Thirdly, SpaceShipTwo will be air launched not ground launched. This has important benefits for both safety and environmental impact. SpaceShipTwo is being built following a design brief that deliberately seeks to avoid unnecessary complexity and in particular, moving parts. This is a very different concept than that which applied to the Space Shuttle and one which is key to safety and reliability. SpaceShipTwo's rocket propellant system will be a single hybrid rocket motor rather than the separate solid and liquid rocket boosters/engines used by the Space Shuttle. There are great safety advantages to the hybrid system which of course needs to develop far less power than the Space Shuttle due to weight and scope of flight.


Where are the spaceships being built?
The spaceships are being built by Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites which is based at the Mojave Spaceport in California, USA.

Where will the space flights be launched from?
Virgin Galactic's spaceport and operational headquarters, Spaceport America, will be built in New Mexico. However, initial flights will be launched from the Mojave Spaceport in the Mojave Desert, California.

Who is designing and building the spaceships?
The Spaceship Company, a joint venture between Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Group and Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites, has contracted Scaled Composites to design and build SpaceShipTwo and the mothership WhiteKnightTwo. Virgin Galactic will own and operate at least five of the new spaceships and two motherships.

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