Virgin Galactic makes debut solo flight

Virgin Galactic makes debut solo flight

Virgin Galactic’s Enterprise has completed its solo test flight over California yesterday. The suborbital commercial spaceship was carried by a carrier aircraft and launched at an altitude of 45,000 ft (13,700 m) to land later at the Mojave Air and Space Port.

Enterprise will soon accept more bookings for commercial passengers willing to spend about $200,000 for a chance to travel above the atmosphere and experience weightlessness.

Virgin Galactic owner Sir Richard Branson witnessed the inaugural flight.

“This was one of the most exciting days in the whole history of Virgin,” Branson said. “For the first time since we seriously began the project in 2004, I watched the world’s first manned commercial spaceship landing on the runway at Mojave Air and Space Port and it was a great moment.”

Branson’s venture is seeking to become the first commercial space line and claimed that it has flight reservations from at least 370 customers in the pipeline.

The Enterprise was built from the SpaceShipOne prototype spacecraft which made history back in 2004 by soaring to 60 miles (100 km) in the atmosphere and won the X-Prize.

Scaled Composites, based in Mojave, built the Enterprise which will sit eight people - six passengers and two crew members.

The ship will be carried by the “Eve” plane in future flights before being allowed to detach and fire up its own rocket engine to exit the atmosphere into space.

It took about 25 minutes for the solo test flight to be completed by pilots Pete Siebold and Mike Alsbury.

Posted by Sophia Andrews on Monday October 11 2010, 8:06 AM EST. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under Featured News, Travel. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0