Successful flight into space
Virgin Galactic launches space tourism
06/29/2023, 7:12 p.m
Three Italians are the first paying customers for a Virgin Galactic space flight. At an altitude of more than 80 kilometers, they enjoy a few minutes of weightlessness. With the successful flight, Richard Branson’s company heralds its attack on the competition.
Space tourism company Virgin Galactic has successfully completed its first flight into space with paying passengers. Founded by British billionaire Richard Branson, the company flew three Italians into space from New Mexico, live footage showed. Two members of the Italian Air Force and an Italian researcher were able to enjoy several minutes of zero gravity and conduct brief experiments before the VSS Unity spacecraft returned to Earth.
A carrier aircraft with the “VSS Unity” took off in the morning (local time) for the 90-minute Galactic 01 mission from the runway of the Spaceport America cosmodrome in the New Mexico desert. The carrier aircraft initially brought the “VSS Unity” to an altitude of around 15 kilometers. From there, the spacecraft, which looked like a private jet, flew on at an altitude of more than 80 kilometers and thus reached space according to the definition of the US Army.
Aboard the “VSS Unity” were officers Walter Villadei and Angelo Landolfi of the Italian Air Force, engineer Pantaleone Carlucci of Italy’s National Research Council and Virgin Galactic employee Colin Bennett. The spacecraft was flown by two Virgin Galactic pilots. Arriving in space, the passengers spread out an Italy flag.
Tickets for $450,000
Founded in 2004, Virgin Galactic has previously flown into space five times, and now, for the first time, paying passengers were on board. In July 2021, Richard Branson had personally participated in a space flight. After that, the company had to take a longer break for technical improvements, and Virgin Galactic only completed a flight into space again at the end of May.
Virgin Galactic’s space tourism program has been repeatedly delayed, particularly after an accident in 2014 that killed a pilot. Since 2005, the company has pre-sold around 800 tickets for trips into space. The ticket price was initially between 200,000 and 250,000 dollars and was later raised to 450,000 dollars (around 412,000 euros).
The company competes with Blue Origin, owned by billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, which has already sent 32 people into space on short suborbital flights. Since an accident in September 2022, his rocket has also remained on the ground.