The suborbital tourism company Virgin Galactic, hoping to give ultra-rich adventurer the rides of their lives, will launch its first WhiteKnightTwo mothership for its planned fleet of SpaceShipTwo spaceliners on July 28 of this year.
Virgin Galactic has ordered two WhiteKnightTwo motherships and five SpaceShipTwos. The first mothership is named “Eve” in honor of the mother of Sir Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Galactic. It will be unveiled at a hangar of Scaled Composites located at the Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, California. WhiteKnightTwo is touted to be the the world's largest all carbon composite aircraft. With a unique dual-boom design, the mothership sports a wingspan of about 140 feet (42 meters) with each outboard cabin mounted about 25 feet (7.6 meters) from its centrally moored SpaceShipTwo payload.
On the other hand, the reusable spaceliner fleet SpaceShipTwo, designed by aerospace veteran Burt Rutan and his company Scaled Composites, is an air-launched suborbital spacecraft derived from Rutan's US$10-million Ansari X Prize-winning SpaceShipOne design. It is also designed with the capability to haul unmanned rockets in place of a crew-carrying vehicle, and could one day be used to launch low Earth orbiting satellites or even cargo into space, according to a Virgin Galactic executive. With its 18-inch (46-cm) windows and roomy 7.5-foot (2.2-meter) wide cabin, the suborbital vehicle could be used for suborbital science experiments in addition to leisure trips. SpaceShipTwo is slated to be unveiled early next year.
A joyride to suborbital space costs around a whopping US$200,000 a seat. Nonetheless, about 254 people have already paid a total of about US$36-million in down payments to assure their SpaceShipTwo seats once the spacecraft begins operational flights.
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