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Virgin Galactic Zooms through 'Cold Flow' Test to Inch Closer to Space

April 23, 2013 at 9:51 AM | by | Comments (0)

We haven’t heard that much from Virgin Galactic recently, but that doesn’t mean the space ship team hasn’t been hard at work behind the scenes. They’re still doing their very best to ensure that space tourism becomes a reality sooner than later. That’s definitely good, since from what it sounds like, the space flight carrier already has more than a few customers on the books and ready to go.

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShip Two just finished its latest round of testing, and thankfully things all went according to plan. The latest aerial endeavor was known as a "cold flow” test. They haven't lit the rocket engines on this sucker just yet, but it means they've completed pretty much everything else—so that means they’re ready for the next step. The ship’s contrail was even visible for the first time, so now we know how awesome the thing will look like when it blasts away from earth.

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Virgin Galactic Sorta Sets a Date for Space Flights in 2013

February 16, 2012 at 2:59 PM | by | Comments (0)

It’s not exactly time to bust out the celebration champagne just yet, but it sounds like Virgin Galactic is starting to make some serious progress in the commercial space race. There’s been roughly 75 test flights of WhiteKnightTwo—that’s the carrier plane—as well as several SpaceShipTwo voyages.

SpaceShipTwo will eventually do its thing as the suborbital space ship, and its been doing its best to glide back down to the ground after being dropped high in the sky from WhiteKnightTwo.

The real excitement and testing is going to come as soon as this summer, as that’s when they’ll fire up the rockets to send SpaceShipTwo a little bit higher into the sky. The goal is to eventually reach around 62 miles or so above the earth, where paying passengers can get a glimpse of the curvature of globe, the darkness of space, and experience sweet, sweet weightlessness. If all goes well it sounds like this might be possible by the end of the year, but it would only be the spaceship making the journey—no paying passengers just yet.

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The Little Virgin Galactic Surprise in Virgin Atlantic's Heathrow Clubhouse

October 17, 2011 at 3:17 PM | by | Comments (0)

Where in the world is Richard Branson? He's in the Mojave Desert today, for the official dedication of Spaceport America, the base and building for all the fun of Virgin Galactic.

Here's the thing, though—Spaceport America has already been "open" now since May, when their three-hour tours began. Today was just all the official pomp and circumstance, plus a little show-off flight from SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo.

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NASA Hires Virgin Galactic to Cover All That Space Flying Stuff

August 15, 2011 at 3:34 PM | by | Comments (0)

The United States doesn't really have a space travel program any more, inasmuch as our leaders found better and more inspirational programs to fund than ones that have astronauts literally reaching for the stars (e.g. empty rural airports in the home states of powerful Senators).

The problem is that NASA still has engineers and scientists who need to run experiments in low-gravity and no-gravity conditions, and they'd kind of like to keep doing some of those. So agency officials looked around, scratched their collective heads, and checked if there was still anyone still doing that space flight thing.

And that's the short version of how Virgin Galactic became NASA's official sub-contracter. The press release is here, and if you click through make sure you at least read the bolded quote in the middle of the release. It's the longest string of words that mean the least that you'll ever encounter.

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From Axl Rose to Zulu Warrior: A Visual History of Sir Richard Branson in Wacky Costumes

June 30, 2011 at 9:48 AM | by | Comment (1)


Branson dressed as a boxer. He's quite the knockout (get it?).

After much scientific testing, complicated measuring and grueling research, we've come to the very important conclusion that it is impossible to think Virgin Group main man Sir Richard Branson is anything but extremely awesome. C'mon—the man kite-boards with naked models, says he wants to build a spaceship and then actually does it, saves the world daily with his many charities, and yet still has time to sit down with us for a quick chat.

We last caught up with Sir Richard onboard Virgin America's inaugural flight to Chicago-O'Hare. As for all other monumental occasions in his family of Virgin brands, Branson donned a fun costume and parades around for the cameras, bursting with vim and vigor. This got us thinking. What costume, after all these years of dressing wacky for promotional stunts, does Richard really wish he could wear? So we asked him.

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Virgin Galactic's Spaceport America Opens to Public for Three-Hour Tours

May 12, 2011 at 11:08 AM | by | Comments (0)

Planning to hit happy hour tonight after work? We have something for toast to: the opening of Spaceport America, which represents yet another step closer to making space tourism a possibility. The Spaceport, located in the Mojave Desert in New Mexico—Albuquerque is 150 miles to the south—only just completed its runway in October and is already open for public tours.

This comes at the most opportune time; just as the sun is going down on the NASA space program and the space shuttles retired, Virgin Galactic's new wave spaceships enter the spotlight.

The AP has the news first, of course, that Virgin Galactic's facilities will host the first tour this Friday, a tour aimed at "giving guests an up close look at the spaceflight facilities before operations begin," which is later this year if all continues to go according to plan.

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Space Tourism Six Years From Now to Be Kind of Affordable

May 9, 2011 at 1:47 PM | by | Comments (0)

Obviously "affordable" is a relative concept when it comes to space tourism. But we've been telling you for a while to keep your fingers crossed for competition between Virgin Galactic and potential rivals, if only because that way we can all dream about one day maybe flying in a sub-orbital. Prices aren't going to drop in the next few years for a bunch of reasons, from the fact that Virgin Galactic is the only company building a spaceport—which kind of puts a damper on competition—to the simple high costs of flying people into space.

Even at this early stage, though, serious people are beginning to envision how space tourism might become more available to more people. Virgin Galactic's former President Will Whitehorn just gave a far-reaching talk on the topic, and he predicted that ticket prices would drop from their current price of $200,000 to below $100,000.

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Let's Talk Space Tourism. What's Virgin Galactic Been Up To Lately?

April 25, 2011 at 5:02 PM | by | Comments (0)

Six months after its first solo flight—coverage and background here and here—the Virgin Galactic VSS Enterprise passed another milestone last Friday. The sub-orbital spaceship set a new 14:30 minute record after being dropped by its mothership, gliding over the Mohave Desert while test pilots confirmed that everything was working. This was the spaceship's fifth release, and things continue to progress nicely.

Eventually tests will start to incorporate the craft's space-age hybrid rocket motor, which thus far has only been tested on the ground. Those trials are going to begin over the next few months, with 2012 still the target for when commercial space tourism becomes a reality. By then the New Mexico Spaceport America, being built for both vertical and horizontal takeoffs, will also be ready.

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What Travel Goodies the Celebs Got in the $200,000-Plus Oscars Gift Bags

March 1, 2011 at 9:35 AM | by | Comments (0)

Now that the Academy Awards are over and the celebrities have fled to their vacation homes to bask in the glory of a owning a statuette or wallow in self-pity for losing, we can talk about what everybody at the Oscars got regardless: the swag bag. Winners, losers...everybody gets gifted with free stuff! Last year's gift bag was valued at $91,000; will this year's top it?

The answer to that is YES, and in only the first item! Natalie Portman, et al., were handed a chance to go to space with Virgin Galactic along with a scale model of the craft. The orbital space flight gift is worth $200,000. We wonder who'll redeem that voucher? Colin Firth in spaaaaccceee...

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Richard Branson On Hand To Open Spaceport America's First Runway

October 25, 2010 at 9:05 AM | by | Comments (0)

A spaceship that can fly on its own needs a runway for takeoffs and landings, and so Virgin Galactic now has one of those too. The company's head honcho Richard Branson was joined last Friday by Governor Bill Richardson to formally inaugurate the much-anticipated runway of the much-anticipated spaceport in the New Mexico desert. That would be the much-anticipated commercial spaceport, built specifically to shuttle space tourists back and forth.

We're not quite there yet, because the VSS Enterprise - having completed that drop flight two weeks ago - still needs to undergo further work. Rocket testing has to be done, and nobody's actually flown the thing into space yet. But with updates now coming every month and half a month, it's not hard to squint into the future and see a time when space tourism actually becomes a capital-t Thing. The official estimate is 9 months to 18 months, give or take a few.

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Space, Ahoy! Virgin Galactic Spaceship Completes First Solo Flight

October 11, 2010 at 1:30 PM | by | Comments (0)

That's one more landmark in space tourism down, now that Virgin Galactic has successfully completed a free flight and landing of its commercial spaceship VSS Enterprise. The vehicle is the first of five that the company plans to build and up until now it has been hoisted into the air and brought back down by its mothership Eve. Not any more. It was released at 45,000 feet above the Mohave Desert and glided its way down for 11 minutes before making a perfect landing. You can see Virgin's Flickr gallery of the flight here.

The sky is no longer the limit" said Richard Branson, not bothering to add that you'll need to pay $200,000 to get a seat on the aircraft. We covered the industry dynamics behind sub-orbitals like the Enterprise when the ship was unveiled last year, and there are also broader forces pushing ticket costs down. Still, the 100km flights are going to be out of reach for most people for most of the foreseeable future. Plus the first 370 seats have already been reserved to the tune of $50 million total, so there's even a waiting list.

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Boeing Signs Up to Explore Space Tourism as Early as 2015

September 20, 2010 at 8:28 AM | by | Comments (0)

Another day, another small reason to be optimistic that space tourism will (someday) become as affordable as any other once-in-a-lifetime vacation. We've written about commercial space travel company Space Adventures a bunch, from their extreme summer vacations to their just-over-six-figures per trip sub orbiters. Now they've passed another major milestone, inking a deal with Boeing to put passengers on board "Crew Space Transportation"—100 vehicles to be made by Boeing, with the intention of sending them very speedily into a low Earth orbit.

Prices for the rides haven't been published yet, and Space Adventures has a little bit of time before that becomes an issue. Boeing hasn't even started manufacturing the crafts yet, and no flights are expected until some time around 2015. We're not exactly holding our breath on the price tag either. It's not like these are going to be LCC-level prices, which is closer to our usual wheelhouse.

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