"We hope to create thousands of astronauts over the next few years and bring alive their dream of seeing the majestic beauty of our planet from above, the stars in all their glory and the amazing sensation of weightlessness," Branson said in September 2004. "The development will also allow every country in the world to have their own astronauts rather than the privileged few."
Virgin Galactic claims to be the original space tourism enterprise. Its owner and founder, Richard Branson is heavily invested and interested in the process. The company was founded in 1999, and since then it has made huge leaps in the space travel. After years of research and development, the company unveiled its spacecraft . In December 2009, Virgin Galactic launched VSS Enterprise, the first SpaceShipTwo. One year later, in July the company had its first test flight.
Unfortunately, the company has suffered multiple setbacks. The most disastrous of which was when the vehicle broke apart during a test flight. The pilot, Peter Siebold, was injured and the copilot, Michael Alsbury, was killed. It was determined that the fault was caused by the early development of the feathering re-entry system. The crash was a major setback to the company. Richard Branson while still focused on space tourism, has begun to divert some of the company's energy and resources to other enterprises.
Very interesting topic! Is this post introducing one way in which space travel will be accessible in the future? Will the setback make space tourism less of a reality?
ReplyDeleteThis sounds like it will be very interesting! Personally I would be terrified to do this! Are there any other projects similar to this one ran by Richard Branson? Are there estimated prices at this early stage if it becomes successful? What would be the average time of tourist in space and how often would tourist be able to take off?
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