PALO ALTO, USA (Reuters) – Virgin Galactic, an appendix to the Virgin Group Richard Branson, hopes to make its first flight test of one ship over Earth’s atmosphere this year, and have a service commercial suborbital in 2013 or 2014, said on Monday the company responsible for.
Almost 500 clients have pointed to flights on SpaceShipTwo, a ship of two pilots and six passengers which constructs and test Scaled Composites, an aerospace company founded by Burt Rutan aircraft designer and property of Northrop Grumman.
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Suborbital flights, which cost 200,000 dollars (148,000 euros) per person, are designed to reach a height of about 109 kilometers), giving passengers a few minutes to experience the absence of gravity and to view the Earth against the blackness of space.
“In the suborbital area, there are many things you can do.” “This is an area that has basically been absent for four decades,” said Neil Armstrong, which was the 1960s X-15 research aircraft test pilot before becoming an astronaut and Commander of the first mission reached the moon.
“There are many opportunities,” Armstrong told an audience of about 400 people in the Suborbitales researchers of next generation Conference in Palo Alto, California. “Of course, I hope that some of the new approaches prove to be profitable and useful”.
Virgin Galactic is the best-known of the handful of companies that are manufacturing spacecraft for tourist, research, educational and business purposes.
SpaceShipTwo, the first of the five buildings that make up its fleet has completed 31 test flights atmospheric – 15 connected with his ship WhiteKnightTwo carrier, and 16 of glide, said William Pomerantz, Vice President of special projects for Virgin Galactic Conference.
Preparations for the first motor-driven flights are already underway in the facilities of Scaled Composites in Mojave, California, and is expected to be held this year.
“Hope to have the engine in her birth space this year and begin powered test flights”, also said at the Conference the head of Virgin Galactic, David Mackay tests pilot.
“We would like to be the first to do this, but we are not in a race with anyone.” This is not like the cold war space race.
“Let’s very quickly the first flight with engine first flight into space, and hence is it will not take much so we have our first commercial flight into space,” declared then Pomerantz journalists.
The Steering said that passenger service could start in 2013 or 2014, depending on the results of the flight test and other factors such as the pilot training.
New market
Not sure what the value of the market of suborbital spaceflights, but Andrew Nelson, Chief of operations of XCOR Aerospace, another aspiring company, has given a figure of a trillion dollars (744,000 million euros).
XCOR, which in May last year announced that it had closed a round of funding of $ 5 million, already has enough money to make his Lynx suborbital vehicle. The company will collect $90,000 per flight.
Asked about the potential impact of a suborbital commercial industry, Armstrong stressed that the X-15 program, designed to investigate the problems of high speed and altitude flights and developing possible solutions, helped United States to become the largest exporter of aerospace products.
“Now are in a completely new environment,” stated, “with different objectives, different participants, different goals.” “We cannot imagine all the opportunities that exist”.
