Virgin Galactic announces first commercial suborbital flight
Miscellaneous / / May 09, 2023
The first tourists who bought tickets will go to a height of 80 km.
Billionaire Richard Branson, head of Virgin Galactic, has announced that the Galactic 01 mission, with the first commercial passengers, will take place at the end of June 2023. In May, a preparatory test flight with a crew will take place.
The names of those who bought tickets for the launch flight have not yet been disclosed. The cost of such a flight was initially 450 thousand dollars (≈34.9 million rubles).
Recall that the first suborbital flight on the Virgin Galactic VSS Unity rocket plane took place summer 2021. Then Branson himself went on a flight with three tourists who received an invitation. Tickets for subsequent flights started sell only in February 2022.
As part of such a flight, the VSS Unity rocket plane rises into the atmosphere to a height of about 15 km using the White Knight Two twin-body carrier aircraft. Then he unhooks from him, starts his own engine, accelerates to a speed of Mach 3 and reaches a height of more than 80 km. Passengers in flight can feel weightlessness and view the Earth's surface through the windows.
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