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.
Virgin Galactic is a space tourism company founded by Sir Richard Branson in 2004 as part of the Virgin Group conglomerate. The company’s primary goal is to provide suborbital spaceflights to paying customers, allowing them to experience a few minutes of weightlessness and see the curvature of the Earth from the edge of space.
Virgin Galactic’s spacecraft, named SpaceShipTwo, is designed to be carried aloft by a larger carrier aircraft called WhiteKnightTwo, to a certain altitude before being released. Once released, SpaceShipTwo’s rocket engine ignites, propelling the spacecraft and its passengers to the edge of space. The rocket motor burns for a short period of time, pushing the spacecraft to a height of around 80 kilometers (50 miles), which is above the Kármán line, often considered the boundary of space.
Passengers aboard SpaceShipTwo experience several minutes of weightlessness and have the opportunity to view the Earth from a unique vantage point before the spacecraft re-enters the atmosphere and glides back to a runway landing.
The development of Virgin Galactic’s space tourism program has faced numerous challenges, including technical setbacks and tragic accidents. One of the most notable incidents occurred in 2014, when the VSS Enterprise, a prototype of SpaceShipTwo, suffered a catastrophic in-flight breakup during a test flight, resulting in the death of one pilot and serious injuries to another. Despite these setbacks, the company has continued to refine its technology and safety procedures.
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Just like Titanic Tourism ?