Virgin Galactic flies to the edge of space for 1st time, setting the stage for commercial missions
And just like that, Virgin Galactic made it to space.
For the first time in the company's 14-year history, the Richard Branson space outfit has sent one of their suborbital SpaceShipTwo spacecraft to space — at least by their definition.
A test flight on Thursday brought the company's VSS Unity ship — carrying two co-pilots — 51.3 miles up above Earth, making it the company's highest flight yet, once confirmed, according to Virgin Galactic.
Some define space as 100 kilometers — or 62 miles — above Earth, but others, use 50 miles as the boundary.
The Thursday flight could pave the way for the company to begin flying their commercial customers to suborbital space sometime in the relatively near future, a huge boon for the company that has faced its fair share of setbacks on the road to spaceflight.
This triumph comes four years after a fatal accident of the first SpaceShipTwo left one pilot dead and the other injured in October 2014.
An explosion during testing in 2007 killed three people and set the company back on its road to regular suborbital flights.
Today, the test flight program seems to be back on track.
Branson predicted that the company would make it to space before Christmas, and that prediction held true.
SpaceShipTwo reached:
51.4m
271,268ft
82.7km— Virgin Galactic (@virgingalactic) December 13, 2018
The next step hinges on when the VSS Unity can start flying some of the 600 people that have paid $250,000 per seat to touch the void.
These flights aren't the same as an orbital flight to space — which involves actually sending people around the Earth before coming back home.
Virgin Galactic is aiming a little lower, with their plans to use a carrier aircraft — called WhiteKnightTwo — to bring SpaceShipTwo up to altitude before releasing it for a rocket ride that brings it even farther above the planet.
Once at the correct altitude, the pilots cut the engine, letting the ship to glide upwards a bit more and then level off — this allows passengers to feel weightlessness and see the planet against the blackness of space. From there, the ship comes back in for a landing on a runway.
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