Richard Branson Introduces Plan for Space Vehicles
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Within a few years, a handful of rich tourists may be blasting into space in a craft that looks a little like a cross between the space shuttle and a corporate jet.
British billionaire Sir Richard Branson and the aerospace designer Burt Rutan unveiled a model yesterday of SpaceShipTwo, the vehicle they hope will be able to take passengers on suborbital joy rides, sheerly for the fun of it, with test flights beginning as soon as this year.
“Breathtakingly beautiful,” was Mr. Branson’s assessment of the ship, which is now under construction at a hangar in the Mojave Desert.
Speaking to reporters at the American Museum of Natural History, the pair also showed off a model of the big, four-engine jet that will help launch the craft into space.
The twin-fuselage airplane, called the White Knight Two, will carry SpaceShipTwo high into the sky beneath a single 140-foot wing.
The spacecraft would then separate from the plane and rocket into suborbital space, where as many as six passengers and two crew members could unbuckle themselves and experience weightlessness and an unparalleled view before gliding back to Earth.
Passengers would get about 4 1/2 minutes of zero-gravity time, floating about a ship roughly the size of a Falcon 900 executive jet, before returning to their seats.
Will Whitehorn, the president of Mr. Branson’s space tourism company, Virgin Galactic, insisted the project is no pipe dream; construction on the White Knight Two is already more than 70% complete. SpaceShipTwo is about 60% complete, and the company and Mr. Rutan’s aerospace outfit, Scaled Composites, hope to begin test flights this summer.
About 200 prospective passengers from 30 countries have made reservations, shelling out $200,000 apiece. Many were in attendance for yesterday’s presentation, including Ken Baxter, 58, of Las Vegas.
“You can’t even imagine my excitement,” Mr. Baxter said after seeing the models. Mr. Baxter, a real estate marketing executive, said he recently completed preflight training that included being subjected to extreme g-forces in a whirling centrifuge, and hopes to be in space in a year.
“Yeah, I’m scared,” he acknowledged. “But this is about realizing a childhood dream. Space travel is something I’ve been thinking about since I read Jules Verne as a kid.”
