Photo: Virgin Galactic
Just as sister company Virgin Orbit gave its final breath earlier this week, Richard Branson's other space enterprise, Virgin Galactic, finally seems ready to make some real money. That's because on Thursday, May 25, the final test flight of the Unity spaceship took place without a single hitch.
The mission was the 25th the company has ever flown since the spaceship was ready, and, aside for Unity's two pilots, Mike Masucci and CJ Sturckow, had four more people on board for the ride, all of them Virgin Galactic employees: Virgin's chief astronaut instructor Beth Mosses, former NASA astronaut trainer Luke Mays, Christopher Huie, and Jamila Gilbert.
The four did not take the short trip past the Karman line just for fun, or as some sort of corporate reward, but because Virgin needed to test, one last time, how actual, paying customers would find the space-bound experience. We're not given the specifics of their findings, but they all seem to have been pleased enough to give commercial operations a big thumbs up.
The flight took place in the usual Virgin Galactic fashion. Strapped to a double-fuselage carrier plane called VMS Eve, the Unity was transported to an altitude of 44,500 feet (13,500 meters), where it was released. Using its own rocket engine, the ship then accelerated to a top speed of almost Mach 3 and reached an altitude of over 54 miles (87 km) before heading back down.
Just like it will happen with all commercial flights, the test run lasted only briefly. Since the takeoff of the VMS Eve and the landing of the Unity just under one hour and a half passed. That's a very short (but probably extremely intense) experience, one for which customers will have to pay a total of $450,000.
That's the price of a ticket up there according to Virgin. True, it does include much more than the actual trip to the edge of space, meaning stuff like multi-day training and preparation retreat at Spaceport America (not only for the flying customers, but also their family and friends), bespoke flight wear, astronaut insignia, and, of course, photographs and videos of the entire thing.
There is still some work to be done after the Unity 25 flight, including a final assessment of the mission's objectives and the evaluation of the end-to-end customer experience, but the company does feel confident enough to claim the first true commercial flight up, called Galactic 01, should happen as soon as next month.
We do not know yet the names of the people that have signed up for this historic moment, but we're told it's going to be a "commercial research mission." It's likely most details about it will be announced closer to the launch.
The four did not take the short trip past the Karman line just for fun, or as some sort of corporate reward, but because Virgin needed to test, one last time, how actual, paying customers would find the space-bound experience. We're not given the specifics of their findings, but they all seem to have been pleased enough to give commercial operations a big thumbs up.
The flight took place in the usual Virgin Galactic fashion. Strapped to a double-fuselage carrier plane called VMS Eve, the Unity was transported to an altitude of 44,500 feet (13,500 meters), where it was released. Using its own rocket engine, the ship then accelerated to a top speed of almost Mach 3 and reached an altitude of over 54 miles (87 km) before heading back down.
Just like it will happen with all commercial flights, the test run lasted only briefly. Since the takeoff of the VMS Eve and the landing of the Unity just under one hour and a half passed. That's a very short (but probably extremely intense) experience, one for which customers will have to pay a total of $450,000.
That's the price of a ticket up there according to Virgin. True, it does include much more than the actual trip to the edge of space, meaning stuff like multi-day training and preparation retreat at Spaceport America (not only for the flying customers, but also their family and friends), bespoke flight wear, astronaut insignia, and, of course, photographs and videos of the entire thing.
There is still some work to be done after the Unity 25 flight, including a final assessment of the mission's objectives and the evaluation of the end-to-end customer experience, but the company does feel confident enough to claim the first true commercial flight up, called Galactic 01, should happen as soon as next month.
We do not know yet the names of the people that have signed up for this historic moment, but we're told it's going to be a "commercial research mission." It's likely most details about it will be announced closer to the launch.
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