SpaceShipTwo by Virgin Galactic: Officially Revealed
Earlier today, Richard Branson’s Virgin Galatic unveiled the amazing SpaceShipTwo space tourism vehicle. SpaceShipTwo will carry six tourists at a time to 65 miles above the surface of the earth, beyond the Apogee of where our atmosphere ends and space begins. Passengers will experience the full weightlessness of space and unparalleled views of the Earth before returning safely to land. While SpaceShipTwo has not yet been live tested, its completion and introduction to the press is a significant step toward public space travel.
SpaceShipTwo will be carried by a mother ship, the WhiteNightTwo, to a suborbital altitude of 9.5 miles before it undocks and launches its own thrusters into pure black space. Not long after, it’s final altitude will be reached and its passengers will join the lucky few to have ever entered the expansive reaches of space. The ticket price for travel into this final frontier is suggested to run at $200,000 each for a trip that lasts roughly two-and-a-half hours. While it’ll be a few years until SpaceShipTwo’s maiden voyage, that’ll at least give us some time to start saving our pennies to boldly go where few have gone before. [via discovery]
Kind of odd for the world to have so many problems yet we waste millions to go into space. For what?? to site see into nothingness for a few hours?? Come on people, priorities.
you’re just jealous. STFU.
Hey eh, the views of our small, fragile home planet might just wake up people with that kind of spare change enough to begin to care about it…btw
Sure Sir Richard Branson is “wasting millions of dollars” on this project, but he also is a major humanitarian and contributes to a large amount of charities and other organizations for the benefit of mankind. For instance: The Virgin Earth Challenge. http://www.virgin.com/subsites/virginearth/
Read beyond the fine print before you make a judgment.
This is so incredibly foolish considering the vast challenges we have right here on earth that could really benefit from Richard Branson’s incredible imagination.
It’s a business. A private enterprise whose CEO can do as he damn well pleases. It’s not yours or my tax dollars at work here.
Not to mention the fact that the best possible thing humanity could do right now if it’s interested in survival over the long haul is to find suitable spots for colonisation in space. I’m not optomistic that we’ll get there in time to save the species (we’ve wasted the last 50 years, post Moon trip), but it’s a critical journey nonetheless.
Focusing on our own backyard is myopic and will cement our extinction.
Yeah, we should stay put and don’t do anything before we reach world peace and stop all the hunger. Right?
Our greatest advancements in technology, from household to medicinal, comes from space exploration. Increasing the limits of what mankind can accomplish is very difficult to classify as a “waste” by any means.