The pace is picking up for Virgin Galactic, which has managed to take tourists for the first time on a superb parabolic flight over 80 kilometers above sea level. The company keeps its promises of the summer, but the queue is long. The proof ? Jon Goodwin, one of the passengers, had bought his ticket 18 years ago!
At least he was able to enjoy it as planned.
Look, there, customers!
After years of delays, flight postponements and technical troubles, Virgin Galactic achieves a nice hat-trick in 2023, with another take-off of its VSS Unity rocket plane. Despite the campaign’s name, “Galactic 02” was a notable first, as the flight carried the company’s first three tourists. Indeed, the VSS Unity had already made six other successful flights, each time with two pilots at the controls, and regularly an attendant for the passengers in the back seat. But after two flights including only Virgin Galactic employees, and one with Italian scientists and pilots, this was the first to take three of the firm’s 700 (approximately) “paying” customers to the border with space.
The flight itself was uneventful. After approximately one hour of flight under the central wing of the VMS Eve carrier aircraft, the latter jettisoned the VSS Unity, which ignited its rocket engine for approximately one minute, nose vertical towards the black of the space before its passengers can enjoy about 5 to 6 minutes of weightlessness, climbing up to 88.5 kilometers in altitude. After a piloted return to the atmosphere using the aircraft’s swing-tail system, the VSS Unity returned to land while hovering on the long runway at Spaceport America, New Mexico.
A flight and symbols
Being a first, Virgin Galactic had chosen its passengers carefully. Two of the three lucky winners formed a unique duo, since Keisha Schahaff and Anastatia Mayers are mother and daughter! Originally from Antigua and Barbuda in the Caribbean, they won their places on a Virgin Galactic flight in 2021 thanks to a selection from the Space For Humanity foundation. It is the first time that citizens of the Caribbean have crossed the 80 kilometer border, and also the first for a mother and her daughter.
The third “tourist” is Jon Goodwin, a dashing 80-year-old adventurer, Olympic canoe medalist in 1972, who has pursued extreme sports and discovery all his life. Besides being one of the oldest to reach the frontier of space, Jon wanted to prove that it is possible to do so with his Parkinson’s disease. And he did well to cling to the hope of flying, because he had had his ticket since 2005! He had bought it for 200,000 dollars, whereas the place now costs more than double.
It will have to be shown that it works
Virgin Galactic, which has not communicated for nearly a year on the actual number of seats sold, intends to repeat this success a few times by the end of the year. The objective is still very far from profitability (and at 3 passengers per flight, the company is very far from the mark), but it will benefit this semester from its first income for flights since its entry on the public market there at 4 years old. It will be necessary to show investors that it is possible to regularly take passengers for parabolas at an altitude of more than 80 kilometers while refining an economic model which has not proven itself in two decades… However, with three flights in four months, Virgin has made an impression!
Its only competitor, Blue Origin, has not resumed manned flights since an accident (without any human consequences) last September with its New Shepard capsule. What shouldn’t be done, on the other hand, is to set off again for several terms without soaring towards the sky!
Source : SpaceNews
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