Ending months of conceptual drawings, space tourism outfit Virgin Galactic undraped its first commercial spaceship in glitzy ceremonies held on Dec. 7, 2009 in the Mojave Desert.
Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson was on hand to reveal the spaceship, named the Virgin Space Ship Enterprise (V.S.S. Enterprise). Joining him in the customary breaking of champagne bottles were Virgin Galactic President Will Whitehorn and California and New Mexico governors Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bill Richardson.
VSS Enterprise promises to send people into space in 2011, following lengthy safety tests. At most, the Enterprise would offer five minutes of weightlessness and a view of the globe’s curvature.
Would-be astronauts need to cough up $200,000 (£122,000) for a space trek. Already, 3,000 individuals have booked the flights, 300 of whom have paid $20,000 each as a deposit. Many of the latter were seen at the ceremonies in the Mojave Air and Space Port.
“NASA spent billions of dollars on space travel and has only managed to send 480 people into space. We’re hoping to send thousands,” said Sir Branson, who, with his family, would take the first flight.
Scaled Composites, the company of 2004 Ansari X Prize winner Burt Rutan, built VSS Enterprise, otherwise known as the first of the planned SpaceShipTwo fleet. Rutan created the Enterprise’s predecessor SpaceShipOne, which already flew twice into space.
Measuring 60 feet long, VSS Enterprise is attached to a double-fuselage craft called WhiteKnightTwo, in turn nicknamed VMS EVE. The latter would convey VSS Enterprise to an altitude of 50,000 feet, after which a rocket would propel the spaceship further above the planet.
In seconds, the spaceship would ascend towards the fringes of the earth’s atmosphere, 62 miles above the earth. At this point, the passengers have reached suborbital space, where they can unfasten their seatbelts and float around.
Passengers in the Enterprise would then become astronauts in their own right. In comparison, NASA gives astronaut wings to people who have flown 50 miles above the planet.
Branson’s Enterprise will undergo a series of flight and ground safety tests for the next 18 months.