That is not what Branson - or Bezos, for that matter - will be doing. When most people think about spaceflight, they think about an astronaut circling the Earth, floating in space, for at least a few days. There are plenty people out there who climb Mount Everest.” “I think the first group of people who will fly on this acknowledge the risk. But if you don’t try it, you’re also not going to learn,” Guerster said. “It’s kind of a difficult decision to make - if you’re ready, or if you’re not ready, because there is some risk remaining.
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Markus Guerster, an aerospace industry professional who co-authored a 2018 paper on the risks of suborbital space tourism, said there is never a perfect time for a company to deem its spacecraft safe enough to fly members of the public. That decision is left up to Virgin Galactic, and the company made the surprise announcement on July 1 that Branson would be on the very next test flight - becoming the first non-crew member ever to make the trek - this Sunday. That doesn’t mean, however, that the FAA - which is focused primarily on ensuring safety of people and property on the ground - is guaranteeing the spacecraft is safe. No one was harmed in the test flight, which was publicly deemed a success.īut after VSS Unity’s third test flight in May, the company received approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to begin flying passengers. And Virgin Galactic encountered a potentially serious safety hazard during a test flight in 2019, New Yorker staff writer Nicholas Schmidle revealed in a new book, “ Test Gods.” A safety probe was ordered to investigate why a seal on its space plane’s wing had come undone, risking loss of the vehicle and the lives of the three crew members on board. But the company’s development program has also endured years of delays for a variety of reasons, including a fatal 2014 crash that killed a test pilot.Ī planned test flight in December was also halted when VSS Unity’s onboard rocket motor computer lost connection.
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VSS Unity - the name of the SpaceShipTwo that Branson will be taking to space and the first to make the full trek - has completed three successful test flights that’ve reached space. From takeoff to landing, the whole trip takes roughly an hour. Once it reaches the very top of its flight path, it hangs, suspended in microgravity, as it flips onto its belly before gliding back down to a runway landing. Richard Branson: 'I would love Jeff Bezos to come and see our flight off'
Once the mothership reaches about 40,000 feet, the rocket-powered plane is dropped from in between WhiteKnightTwo’s twin fuselages, and fires up its engine to swoop directly upward, accelerating up to more than three times the speed of sound, or 2,300 miles an hour. SpaceShipTwo takes off from an airplane runway attached beneath the wing of a massive, custom-designed quad-jet double-fuselage mothership known as WhiteKnightTwo. The evolved designed is called SpaceShipTwo. Branson bought the rights to that tech, and a team of engineers set to work developing a larger vehicle capable of carrying two pilots and up to six paying customers on a high-speed joy rides.
Richard Branson founded Virgin Galactic in 2004, after watching a space plane called SpaceShipOne rocket into space to win the Ansari X Prize. Here’s a breakdown of just how much danger Branson - and the three people going with him - will be taking on. Still, Virgin Galactic has built safety backstops into its spaceplane, completed more than 20 test flights, three of which have successfully reached the edge of space, received the go-ahead from an internal safety review board and a green light from federal regulators to host passengers.Īny time humans are on an airborne vehicle, there’s risk involved. If all goes as planned, Branson will also be the first billionaire ever to travel to space aboard a vehicle he helped fund the development of, beating fellow space baron Jeff Bezos by just nine days. And the intense physics involved when hurtling out of - and back into - the Earth’s atmosphere could tear the vehicle apart.Īnd now Branson is ready to follow in the footsteps of the test pilots and Virgin Galactic employees who have already flown on VSS Unity, the vehicle Branson’s company, Virgin Galactic, has spent nearly two decades working to develop. The cabin could lose pressure and threaten the passengers’ lives. That’s if everything goes according to plan. Richard Branson will take a rocket-powered space plane on a 2,400 mile-per-hour ride to the edge of space this weekend.
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