Need more space?
Need more space?
You can have as much as you like – for about six minutes – for just $260,000 with Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, which is developing space tourism.
Virgin Galactic is a venture based on the success of history-making SpaceShipOne craft built by Burt Rutan’s Mojave Aerospace Ventures and funded by Microsoft’s Paul Allen.
Virgin has a long history of working with Rutan, including a round-the-world balloon flight in the 1990s and Steve Fossett’s Virgin Atlantic Global Flyer project.
SpaceShipOne has successfully completed three sub-orbital flights and is the prototype for SpaceShipTwo.
Virgin Galactic has ordered five SpaceShipTwo craft and two ‘mother ships’, to be called WhiteKnightTwo.
Construction has begun on these, with the rollout of the first SpaceShipTwo expected in autumn 2006.
Test flights will follow over the next 12 to 18 months.
SpaceShipTwo carries six passengers and one pilot.
Part of the package will be six days of medical preparation, G-tolerance training and discussions with space experts about how to get the most from the experience, simulator flights and, in the evenings, dinning with astronauts and guest speakers.
Plans also call for some flights in jets so as to experience negative gravity and watch one of the other launches.
The space flight will reach Mach 1 around 900 kilometres an hour in less than 10 seconds and eventually disappear into space at more than three times the speed of sound.
But rather than a launch pad like a conventional space rocket, the space ship will take off on a runway.
WhiteKnightTwo – the mother ship – will fly to around 15,240 metres (50,000 feet), the approximate cruising height of Concorde, where she will release SpaceShipTwo (SS2).
A few seconds later, SS2 will fire her hybrid rocket engine and within 10 seconds will be travelling vertically out of the earth’s atmosphere at Mach 3 (three times the speed of sound) pulling 4Gs.
Then passengers will see the cobalt blue sky turn to mauve and indigo and finally black.
Out will come the stars, clear and bright... even though it is daytime.
Once at an altitude of about 120km the rocket will be shut down and passengers will be instantly weightless.
They will enjoy this for four to five minutes.
The cabin is large and has many windows, allowing passengers to experience the full wonder of space and earth.
The ship will manoeuvre, so passengers can look for the first time back at the planet they have just come from. The view will be over 1,600km in any direction, which is like seeing Exmouth from above Perth.
Back on earth, passengers will be given a magnificent gala dinner and be awarded their wings, plus given mementos of the trip.
Already 100 seats have been sold.
Full details of the trip can be obtains from Bicton Travel, which has been appointed sole agents, on 9339 0277.
