Richard Branson unveils his $250,000-per-ride spaceship... Saturday, 27. February 2016

[Queen Esther]

Richard Branson unveils his $250,000-per-ride spaceship....    // February 22, 2016 / 3:57pm

HIS  GALACTIC  SPACESHIP  2....

A  CROWD  OF  SPACE  TOURISM  -  FREAKS !

Wreckage lies near the site where a Virgin Galactic space tourism rocket, SpaceShipTwo, crashed in the desert near Mojave, Calif.  //  SPACESHIP  1...

More than a year after a fatal accident during a test flight of a sister ship, Richard Branson unveiled his shiny new $250,000-a ticket Virgin Galactic spacecraft — the VSS Unity.

“Together, we can make space accessible in a way that has only been dreamt of before now,” the Virgin billionaire said at the unveiling at the Mojave Air & Space Port in California on Friday.

The silver and white craft — about the size of a private jet — is the first designed to carry passengers to space and back to Earth, and Branson already has eager takers: About 700 people have already signed up, including physicist Stephen Hawking, who named the ship.

“We are entering a new space age and I hope this will help to create a new unity,” said Hawking in a recorded message. “Space exploration has already been a great unifier.  We seem able to cooperate between nations in space in a way we can only envy on Earth.”

“It will help bring new meaning to our place on Earth and to our responsibilities as its stewards and it will help us to recognize our place and our future in the cosmos, which is where I believe our ultimate destiny lines,” he added.

The ship can carry six passengers and two pilots, and Branson has already promised Hawking a free ride once the ship is space-ready.

The 74-year-old cosmologist, who has ALS and talks through a specialized system hooked up to his cheek, has been training in weightless environments to prepare for his space odyssey.

“We felt strongly that we should somehow make sure that Stephen remained a permanent part of Unity’s story because so much of what he stands for resonates with what we at Virgin Galactic aspire to be,” the 65-year-old billionaire said. “So the Galactic Girl on the side of our proud Spaceship Unity now carries a banner using an image of Stephen’s eye.”

Similar to the Enterprise — the ill-fated test flight that broke apart over the Mojave Desert in October 2014, killing the co-pilot and injuring the pilot. The newest spacecraft will be launched from a mothership that lights the rocket’s motor.

Virgin officials said the new ship has had changes to the safety mechanism that governs it, and will undergo extensive testing on the ground before pilots fire up its rocket, but company honchos have not released a schedule yet for its first blastoff with passengers. The descent mechanism — which mimics the dynamic of a badminton shuttlecock — will remain the same.

The craft’s flight plan calls for a carrier, called White Knight Two, to ferry it to an altitude of about 50,000 feet, and then release Unity, which will ignite a rocket and travel about 62 miles up, giving passengers a suborbital experience, and a taste of microgravity — floating in space — before gliding back down to Earth.

( PS.  We  shall  see,  what  will  bring  us  the  future  and  what  all  happened...)

 

 

[AnonymousBrother]

Think they have peanuts on the flight?

[Queen Esther]

I think, they will have Champaigne and caviar...  bec. rich people, hahaha  ;o)  cheers ! ???