Branson Shows Off Snazzy Sub-Orbital Space-Tourist Vehicle
It looks a lot like SpaceShipOne (SS1) from the outside, but the
similarities end there. SpaceShipTwo (SS2) sports over three times
the cabin area of SpaceShipOne. With two pilots, there's still
enough room for six passengers.
Branson hired award-winning design artist Philipe Starck to help
with the interior accoutrements, and by all accounts, they're
sensational!
Branson unveiled a mockup of the new craft during a press
conference at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York
City on Thursday. He was participating in a technology show.
The craft's designer, Burt Rutan, has accounted for passenger
comfort with unique auto-reclining seats that orient themselves
based on the phase of flight. Upright, the seats are reclined
sixty-degrees for the flight up and launch, then fully reclined for
the reportedly violent reentry and returning to upright for the
glide to landing.
The voluminous cabin should give passengers plenty of space to
float around during the estimated five minutes of weightlessness on
the planned flight profile. With 15 windows -- spaced around the
floor, walls and ceiling -- everyone should get a spectacular view
of mother earth during the ride.
SS2 will ride aloft slung beneath the behemoth WhiteKnightTwo
(WK2). Larger than a 757, with a cabin identical to SS2, WK2 will
double as a launch vehicle and a training platform for customers
preparing for spaceflight.
Just as the famous SS1 did, SS2 will ignite its hybrid rocket
motor after dropping from beneath WK2 at around 50,000 ft. The
craft will ascend under four Gs of acceleration to a to a
sub-orbital altitude before falling back to earth in the
shuttlecock configuration. Once at a safe altitude, SS2 will
reconfigure and glide to a landing.
This marks the first public display of any kind for the SS2
program. Burt Rutan and his company Scaled Composites have been
working on the craft at the company's Mojave, CA hangar not
necessarily in secret, but certainly without a lot of fanfare.
Virgin Galactic's plans for an initial fleet include two mother
ships and five sub-orbital craft.
Among Virgin Galactic's first customers will be Englishman Alan
Watts. Watts has racked up over 2-million frequent-flyer miles on
Virgin Atlantic Airways -- and he intends to cash them in for a
flight on SS2.
In a statement to the Associated Press, Watts said, "The nearest
I've come to space before was going on the Space Mountain ride in
Florida."
We don't know how much of the cost Watts' frequent flyer miles
will cover, but everyone else will pay $200,000 for a view
stretching nearly 1000 miles in every direction.
Virgin Galactic told CNN it already has 200 confirmed bookings
for the flights slated to begin in 2009 -- with another 65,000
registered at "potentials."