Reuters reports that Virgin Galactic Holdings announced May 8 that its “four-member test flight will take place in May and that it aims to launch its first commercial flight in late June.” Last May, Virgin Galactic “delayed its commercial service to the first quarter of 2023 due to supply-chain crisis and labor shortage. After completing a lengthy upgrade for its centerpiece tourist spacecraft in February, Virgin Galactic re-opened ticket sales for spacecraft flights, setting the price at $450,000 per person with an initial deposit of $150,000.” Mike Moses, president of spaceline missions and safety, said, “Returning to space is what we have all worked towards.” According to Reuters, the “mission crew will consist of Jamila Gilbert, Christopher Hue, Luke Mays and Beth Moses.”
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Tag: VSS Imagine
Virgin Galactic Unveils VSS Imagine Spacecraft
CNBC reports that on Tuesday, Virgin Galactic “unveiled the latest spacecraft addition to its fleet, VSS Imagine, with the spacecraft representing the first of its next-generation SpaceShip III class of vehicles.” The rollout “of VSS Imagine gives the space tourism company a second spacecraft to begin testing, as Virgin Galactic continues to work through final development testing of VSS Unity, with its next spaceflight test expected in May.” VSS Imagine “is the third spacecraft the company has built to date, with VSS Enterprise having been destroyed in a fatal test flight accident in 2014 and VSS Unity having flown two spaceflights so far, its most recent in February 2019.” The “biggest improvement between the SpaceShipTwo and SpaceShip III classes is the turnaround time, both in terms of manufacturing each spacecraft and the amount of maintenance needed between each flight,” according to Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier.
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Virgin Galactic to Sell Suborbital Flight Tickets to General Public
The Hill reports that Virgin Galactic “will begin selling suborbital flight tickets to the general public starting on Wednesday.”
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Space Tourism is a Growth Industry
The New York Times reported
on space tourism industries such as the passenger flights offered by Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic. Currently, “the global space tourism market is skyrocketing, with dozens of companies now offering reservations for everything from zero-pressure balloon trips to astronaut boot camps and simulated zero-gravity flights.” However, the Federal Aviation Administration “has yet to approve most out-of-this-world trips, and construction has not started on the first space hotel.”
Full Story (New York Times – Subscription publication)