Are you ready for Virgin Galactic Space Trip!!

Seems that dream of commercial space flight is nearing!!! If everything goes well, we should be able to buy ticket to space trip and have fun and come back to our beloved earth.. Just pay 200K and you will be added to the waitlist of 530 already registered for this flight. I don't know how soon they will be able to clear this waitlist. Passenger capacity is 6.. So theoretically if they take one flight per day they could fly 1800 passengers per year (assuming 300 flight days per year) with just one single Galactic spaceship.

Will they take my airline miles? If not, then either I need to start buying lottery or make some couple of millions fairly quickly.. or my company' stock goes to $100 or may be $500 or so.. $100 still won't cut in ;-)

200K!! Wao.. it is lot of money for few hours of fun trip but then I am sure it will be well worth it..

Branson’s tourist spaceship a step closer

Test pilot breaks sound barrier in rocket motor craft

By W.J. Hennigan and Adolfo Flores

Los Angeles Times

British billionaire Richard Branson’s commercial space venture Virgin Galactic got one step closer to carrying tourists into space Monday when a test pilot cracked the sound barrier over the Mojave desert.

For the first time, the company’s SpaceShipTwo engaged its rocket motor, sped to Mach 1.2 and reached 56,000 feet in altitude.

The flight is the latest — and largest — milestone in Virgin Galactic’s testing of technology it hopes to use to carry scores of paying customers into space multiple times a day.

“The first powered flight of Virgin Spaceship Enterprise was without any doubt our single most important flight test to date,” Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Galactic, said in a statement. “Today’s supersonic success opens the way for a rapid expansion of the spaceship’s powered flight envelope, with a very realistic goal of full space flight by the year’s end.”

The test flight took place shortly after sunrise Monday beginning on the desert runway at Mojave Air and Space Port, about 100 miles northeast of Los Angeles. During the test, SpaceShipTwo was taken to about 46,000 feet by a carrier aircraft and dropped like a bomb.

After a short free fall, test pilots Mark Stucky and Mike Alsbury engaged the hybrid rocket motor, powered by nitrous oxide and a rubber compound, for 16 seconds, at which point SpaceShipTwo reached Mach 1.2 speeds.

The idea of Virgin Galactic routinely taking passengers to space this way was developed by retired maverick aerospace engineer Burt Rutan and his Mojave company, Scaled Composites.

Until now, astronauts have reached space packed tight in a capsule or shuttle attached to a high-powered rocket.

Instead, Virgin Galactic will use a WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft that will fly with the reusable Space-ShipTwo rocket plane under its wing to 50,000 feet, where the spaceship will separate and blast off.

When the rocket motor engages, it will power the spaceship to nearly 2,500 mph and take the pilot — and up to six passengers — to the edge of space, or more than 60 miles above the Earth’s surface.

Once they reach that suborbital altitude, passengers will experience weightlessness and see the curvature of the Earth. Then they will re-enter the atmosphere and glide back to the runway. The price for the experience: $200,000.

Virgin Galactic, founded by Branson, hopes to make its first passenger flight sometime next year from Spaceport America in New Mexico, where the company plans to conduct routine operations. The company said it has taken about 530 reservations for the ride.

The WhiteKnight-Two carrier aircraft, which resembles a flying catamaran because it has two fuselages, and SpaceShipTwo are still in the midst of a test-flight program that will continue in Mojave until Virgin Galactic believes it can begin commercial operations.

Virgin Galactic’s commercial space launch system is based on Rutan’s SpaceShipOne, the world’s first private manned spaceship, which successfully flew a test pilot to space and back three times during 2004 to win a $10 million X-Prizepurse.

True test of Capitalism!!

If you have read history of flying in early part of 1900s.. and then you read these news.. lot of similarity.. That time it was huge amount of excitement and big investment by rich and famous.. However, Wright bros took the challenge with minimal resources.. This time, though NASA and other government agencies have monopolized earlier part of space age.. but I think, real innovation in Space age will come now.. not only it will make it more cheaper but it will result in much more innovative ways of traveling space and much beyond that..

This will be a big test of Capitalism as private sector takes lead into space age.. Greed can drive lot of innovation but at the same time it can take nasty turn. So far it seems that private entrepreneurs are going in right direction.  But it is too early to predict the final outcome. This one in particular was actually more of NASA hand-holding but big step and risk taken by private sector.

Hope these guys will work harder so I can possibly take affordable commercial flight to space!!


Private race to space for profits

First capsule hired to deliver commercial cargo

By Seth Borenstein

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — A privately built space capsule that’s zipping its way to the International Space Station has also launched something else: A new forprofit space race. The capsule called Dragon was due to arrive near the space station for tests early Thursday and dock Friday with its load of supplies. Space Exploration Technologies — run by Tesla Motors CEO and PayPal co-founder Elon Musk — was hired by NASA to deliver cargo and eventually astronauts to the orbital outpost. And the space agency is hiring others, too. Several firms think they can make money in space and are close enough to Musk’s company to practically surf in his spaceship’s rocket-fueled wake. There are now more companies looking to make money in orbit — at least eight — than major U.S. airlines still flying.Private space companies have talked for years about ferrying goods and astronauts for NASA, but this is the first time one is actually in orbit and about to make a delivery for the space agency. “Dragon is not the only entrant in commercial cargo,” said Jeff Greason, president of XCOR Aerospace, which specializes in the also-busy suborbital marketplace. “They have competitors nipping at their heels.”Still, Dragon’s launch is “the spark that will ignite a flourishing commercial spaceflight marketplace,” said Michael Lopez-Alegria, president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation and a former astronaut.

Hiring Musk’s SpaceX and other private companies is a key part of NASA’s plan to shift focus. Instead of routine flights to the space station with the now retired space shuttles, NASA is aiming farther out to places like asteroids and Mars. After this test flight, SpaceX has a contract with NASA for a dozen delivery runs.

The idea is to “let private industry do what it does best and let NASA tackle the challenging task of pushing the boundary further,” NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver said last week.

NASA has given seed money and contracts to several companies to push them on their way. But eventually, space missions could launch, dock to a private space station or hotel and return to Earth and not have anything to do with NASA or any other country’s space agency.

Earlier this month, Hawthorne-based SpaceX signed an agreement with Bigelow Aerospace of Nevada, which is designing inflatable space stations for research and maybe even tourists. SpaceX and other companies will provide the transportation — like airlines — and Bigelow the place to stay. There are already eight different licensed spaceports in the U.S. where companies can launch from and most of them have no connection to NASA.

Another space launchand- tourism company, Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, is working separately from NASA and the space station.

If NASA isn’t involved, there is one federal agency that is. The Federal Aviation Administration has a commercial space office that licenses private space missions and works with NASA to set safety standards.

An update on some of the closest competitors to SpaceX:

■ Orbital Sciences of Dulles, Va., is in the cargoonly business, but it is closest to launch. It has a NASA contract for $1.9 billion for eight cargo flights to the space station once its rockets succeed.

■ Alliant Techsystems, headquartered in Arlington, Va., isn’t funded by NASA’s commercial space program but has developed the Liberty rocket and passenger spacecraft system. Most of the rocketry and capsule systems have been tested. A key structural test of the rocket’s second stage is scheduled for early July.

■ Boeing of Chicago has nearly $113 million in NASA commercial crew funding and just finished its second parachute drop test in the Nevada desert. It has completed 46 of 52 milestones needed before flights, spokeswoman Susan Wells said. A landing air bag test is targeted for fall. n Sierra Nevada Corp. of Sparks, Nev., with nearly $106 million from NASA, is building a mini-shuttle crew vehicle called Dream Chaser with a first flight targeted for 2016 or possibly 2017. The company this year finished landing gear tests and has a full-scale ship for flight testing attached to a helicopter this fall in California.

■ The most secretive of the companies, Blue Origin of Kent, Wash., is run by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and has received $22 million from NASA. Its crew and cargo vehicle, called New Shepard, would also take tourists to suborbit. Its shell passed wind tunnel tests and its engines are now being test fired at NASA’s Stennis Space Center.

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PIERRE DUCHARME/REUTERS

The SpaceX Falcon 9 test rocket lifts off Tuesday at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.