Inside KSC News Feeds
07-28-2008, 08:24 PM
After years of working mostly in secret, Virgin Galactic has unveiled WhiteKnightTwo, a vehicle the company hopes will launch the beginning of commercial space tourism.
The plane, named Eve for Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson's mother, was rolled out of a hanger in the Mojave Desert on Monday. There, the company planned to show the vehicle off to industry experts, government officials and a subset of roughly 270 customers who have reserved spots on the firm's first suborbital flights.
The plane's manufacturer, Scaled Composites, plans to begin a series of about 100 test flights of the aircraft later in 2008, Virgin Galactic's president Will Whitehorn said in a video conference with reporters attending the EAA AirVenture show (http://www.airventure.org/) in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.
WhiteKnightTwo is a two-fuselage plane that will be used to loft a spacecraft called SpaceShipTwo (http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn13219-virgin-galactic-unveils-model-of-spaceshiptwo.html) to an altitude of 15 kilometres. There, the spaceship will detach from the plane and fire a rocket to take passengers some 100 km above the Earth, where they will experience several minutes of zero gravity.
WhiteKnightTwo features a 43-metre-long wing, underneath which sit two cabins. http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=7807a421e790ed5683ac599fb69d6df0 http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=7807a421e790ed5683ac599fb69d6df0
More... (http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?i=7807a421e790ed5683ac599fb69d6df0)
The plane, named Eve for Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson's mother, was rolled out of a hanger in the Mojave Desert on Monday. There, the company planned to show the vehicle off to industry experts, government officials and a subset of roughly 270 customers who have reserved spots on the firm's first suborbital flights.
The plane's manufacturer, Scaled Composites, plans to begin a series of about 100 test flights of the aircraft later in 2008, Virgin Galactic's president Will Whitehorn said in a video conference with reporters attending the EAA AirVenture show (http://www.airventure.org/) in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.
WhiteKnightTwo is a two-fuselage plane that will be used to loft a spacecraft called SpaceShipTwo (http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn13219-virgin-galactic-unveils-model-of-spaceshiptwo.html) to an altitude of 15 kilometres. There, the spaceship will detach from the plane and fire a rocket to take passengers some 100 km above the Earth, where they will experience several minutes of zero gravity.
WhiteKnightTwo features a 43-metre-long wing, underneath which sit two cabins. http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=7807a421e790ed5683ac599fb69d6df0 http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=7807a421e790ed5683ac599fb69d6df0
More... (http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?i=7807a421e790ed5683ac599fb69d6df0)