Posted on 12/13/2018 9:23:12 AM PST by billorites
Virgin Galactic LLC, Richard Branson’s space-tourism venture, reached the edge of space in a test flight Thursday, four years after a fatal accident set back the project, forced a reassessment of safety issues and roiled the growing commercial-space industry.
Virgin Galactic launched the spaceplane called SpaceShip Two and its two pilots from a carrier aircraft cruising miles above Southern California’s Mojave desert. For around $200,000 a seat, the closely held company seeks to offer thrill rides featuring majestic views of the earth capped by a few minutes of weightlessness.
The launch also could provide momentum for nascent private efforts to blast tourists and small satellites into space using low-cost rockets and various other unconventional launch systems.
Virgin Galactic years ago led the way in sparking interest in the industry segment, considered to be the most promising and fastest-growing part of commercial space. But a December 2014 accident caused the company to assume a significantly lower profile.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Hopefully Zuckerberg will ride this A LOT, esp when ops first begin.
SoCal ping
I would absolutely LOVE to do this at some time in my life!
Before alzheimers or severe arthritis sets it.
Not be one of the first 1000, though.
There will be many lessons Man must learn about Space Travel and it’s effects on the human body before it’s relatively safe. That includes the effects of re-entry into our atmosphere. The air pressure, the centrifugal forces, along with temperature changes all must be considered.
To paraphrase Nancy Pelosi’s infamous statement about Obamacare; “We will need to open up or actually DO manned travel into Outer Space so that we may find out what’s really involved in it.
Caption; “I thought YOU turned the stove off!”
We already know quite a bit about space medicine and the effects of weightlessness and re-entry.
Is that the curved Earth or the Flat Earth? :)
There are vast number of less expensive ways to commit suicide
Full cost seats for you Kyrie Irving! (Free drinks if he comes back and report the earth is an Oblate Speiroid!)
https://www.sbnation.com/2018/10/1/17925768/kyrie-irving-apology-flat-earth-theory-celtics
For additional information on those who believe that medieval Europeans stupidly belived the world to be flat:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmas_Indicopleustes
“David C. Lindberg asserts: “Cosmas was not particularly influential in Byzantium, but he is important for us because he has been commonly used to buttress the claim that all (or most) medieval people believed they lived on a flat earth. This claim...is totally false. Cosmas is, in fact, the only medieval European known to have defended a flat earth cosmology, whereas it is safe to assume that all educated Western Europeans (and almost one hundred percent of educated Byzantines), as well as sailors and travelers, believed in the earth's sphericity.”[8]
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What always amazes me is from the first powered flight to landing on the moon was just 66 years.
What saddens me is that in nearly the same amount of time, we have accomplished virtually nothing other than the promotion of urban blight, destruction of the Black Family, and worthless “Muslim Outreach”!
We kneel to our Democrat overlords who caused and allowed it.
Hmmm...... is that a P-76?
Those TSA inspections are going to suck.
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