Virgin Galactic moves closer to commercial space travel

by Stevie Smith - Dec 23 2008, 13:00

Richard Branson’s dream of creating a viable space travel service has taken another step towards commercial reality this week after the successful completion of a test flight involving the WhiteKnightTwo carriage aircraft.

WhiteKnightTwo, which looks like a pair of commercial aircraft sharing one super wide wing, has been designed to carry Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo to high altitude before then detaching and allowing the groundbreaking suborbiter to continue on its journey. 

Powered by four Pratt and Whitney PW308A turbofan engines, the WhiteKnightTwo took off from the Mojave Air and Space Port early on Sunday morning and flew for an hour with minimum crew before returning safely to the runway at 9:17am.

“And here we are on a Sunday morning… in a place out here in the middle of nowhere and really neat stuff is happening. It looked just beautiful,” commented Mojave Air and Space Port general manager Stuart Witt regarding the test flight.

“What brings people to this desolate landscape on a Sunday morning in December is more about what forced them here,” he added in a SPACE.com report. “Innovation by the private sector is a void being filled because NASA deserted 90 percent of the sandbox and left it open for us to fill.”

Designed by California-based Scaled Composites, the WhiteKnightTwo is scheduled to undergo a series of other test flights ahead of receiving the SpaceShipTwo rocket plane – which Scaled Composites is still in the process of developing.

Branson’s Virgin Galactic venture has a total of five SpaceShipTwo craft on order through Scaled Composites along with two of units of the WhiteKnightTwo carrier planes.

While Virgin Galactic is looking to operate its spaceline service from New Mexico via Spaceport America, which is not yet completed, only the world’s elite will stand a chance of enjoying one its flights.

More pointedly, in a financial separation similar to that which kept the masses from the first commercial airlines, individual seats on a Virgin Galactic flight will cost somewhere in the vicinity of $200,000 USD each.

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