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the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, Virgin Galactic’s first tourists rocketed to the edge of space on Thursday. The tourists were a former British Olympian who bought his ticket 18 years ago and a mother-daughter duo from the Caribbean. Virgin Galactic can now start offering monthly rides. There are currently about 800 people on Virgin Galactic’s waiting list, with tickets costing $450,000.
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, Virgin Galactic has reopened ticket sales for its SpaceShipTwo space plane at $450,000 per seat. The spaceship recently carried four passengers, including Richard Branson, to the edge of space for a few minutes of weightlessness. The mission was a key milestone test before Virgin starts flying individual customers. Virgin is targeting September for its first revenue-generating mission, which will carry research payloads and three members of the Italian Air Force.
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Spaceport America New Mexico, after nearly 17 years of development and over a billion of dollars invested in Virgin Galactic, Sir Richard Branson has achieved his dream and reached space.
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, in the race to commercialize space travel Virgin Galactic will launch its next test flight on July 11. Founder Sir Richard Branson will be on board, beating Jeff Bezos to space by nine days. The test will be Virgin Galactic’s fourth test space flight. Its most recent test flight had two pilots on board. There will be three Virgin Galactic mission specialists alongside Branson. The flight will be live-streamed on Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook.
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, Virgin Galactic has received approval to begin flying customers to the edge of space. The approval follows a successful test flight last month. It is valid through to July 2022 for missions launching from Spaceport America in New Mexico or the Mojave Air and Space Port in California. Virgin Galactic is still planning three more test flights with its employees. Richard Branson plans to be onboard one of the test flights.
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, Virgin Galactic unveiled the VSS Imagine on Tuesday, the first of its next-generation SpaceShip III class of vehicles. It is the third spacecraft the company has built to date. The VSS Imagine was designed with lessons taken from flight testing on VSS Unity in mind. SpaceShip III class spacecraft can be manufactured faster and take less time to maintain between each flight compared to SpaceShipTwo class spacecraft due to their modular design. Virgin Galactic is on track for a test flight in May, after a delay in December.
Memories >>>During a televised hearing, Feynman demonstrated that the material used in the shuttle’s O-ringsbecame less resilient in cold weather by compressing a sample of the material in a clamp and immersing it in ice-cold water.
Virgin ‘ignored’ space safety warnings before crash: expert
Los Angeles (AFP) – A rocket science safety expert on Sunday said Virgin Galactic “ignored” safety warnings in the years leading up to the deadly crash of its spacecraft in California, as investigators hunted for clues to accident’s cause.
Carolynne Campbell, a rocket propulsion expert with the Netherlands-based International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety, said she could not speculate on the cause of Friday’s crash without “all the data.”
However, she said multiple warnings had been issued to Virgin since 2007, when three engineers died testing a rocket on the ground.
“Based on the work we’ve done, including me writing a paper on the handling of nitrous oxide, we were concerned about what was going on at Virgin Galactic,” she told AFP.
“I sent copies of the paper to various people at Virgin Galactic in 2009, and they were ignored,” she said.
https://news.yahoo.com/probe-virgin-spaceship-crash-may-085338983.html;_ylt=AwrBJR8tdlZUJ0YAc5XQtDMD
