Virgin Galactic Unveils First Commercial Manned Spaceship

[Brian]

Today, Virgin Galactic unveiled SpaceShipTwo, the world's first commercial manned spaceship. The first SpaceShipTwo craft was renamed the VSS Enterprise in a christening ceremony attended by Virgin founder Richard Branson, SpaceShipTwo designer Burt Rutan, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson.

Virgin expects to conduct 18 months of flight tests and then begin commercial flights to space starting in 2011, eventually building a fleet of at least six spacecraft.. Each flight will launch from Spaceport America in New Mexico and carry six passengers and two pilots to a speed of 2500 mph and an altitude of 62 miles, where they can experience weightlessness, see black sky, and look down on the curve of the Earth.

Tickets are $200,000 each, and each reservation requires a $20,000 deposit. If you have the cash handy, you can book your spaceflight now. Over 300 passengers have already put down a deposit.

Would you sign up, if you had the money?

[celiathepoet]

No. Talk about environmental impact....

[blau]

No, because then I'd have to worry about galactic replacement bus services!

*crickets*

[Jan]

It makes me happy that they named it the Enterprise.

[Lady_Catherine]

Yes, but not for me. The Love God's dream is to go to space. He was there for the launch of Space Ship One. He (until we got stuck in Wichita) worked on satellites and his thesis was on ion propulsion. Maybe the cost (and hopefully the impact- you're so right, ctp!) will go down enough that he will be able to do so in his lifetime. I so wish we could afford for him to be on one of those flights.

[Joe]

I would in principle, but ideally I'd want to actually go somewhere - like a stay on the moon, or an orbiting space hotel or something. Visiting the edge of space is nice, but you can do that in a high altitude balloon (maybe not as high, but the same effect - black sky, curve of earth etc).

I would be the first to sign up for the moon base.

[Amelia]

It isn't tops on my wish list, but if I had unlimited resources, yeah, I would like to spend a few days in orbit. I've been to Space Camp twice -- does that give me a head start on the training?

[ZackAttack]

Even if I were a billionaire, I couldn't justify paying $200K for any experience when there are so many nearly-free ones here on earth. That would just seem frivolous to me.

[Meetzorp]

Heh, not until there's a Babylon 6, where we can go party with the Membari.

What's the point until there's also an intergalactic space station to go to?

[Meechie]

Hell to the no. I'm doing really good with just getting on a plane and not freaking out. In fact, I'm sort of enjoying the ride as long as there is absolutely no turbulence. Let's not go crazy here.

[Brian]

No. Talk about environmental impact....

Actually, Virgin Galactic points out that the per-passenger impact of each flight is less than that of a one-way trip between London and New York.

Visiting the edge of space is nice, but you can do that in a high altitude balloon (maybe not as high, but the same effect - black sky, curve of earth etc).

Yes, but unless something goes very, very wrong, you won't experience weightlessness at the same time...

Sure, I'd rather go to a moon base, but I see this as one step along the way. If suborbital space tourism catches on, then we can move on the orbital flights, and eventually lunar flights.

For me, going into space was one of my earliest and deepest dreams, so I would definitely do it if I had enough money. I would define "enough money" as having at least $500K in the bank, and being willing to spend slightly less than half of that on a trip to space...

[badverb]

I would definitely do this if I had the cash. Like Brian, I've been dreaming about this since I was a kid.

I suppose we'll really have to win the lottery, now.

[planetmort]

I'm with Brian, except that my skydiving experience has shown me I hate weightlessness. So if I had that kind of cash, I'd want to go, but be afraid it would simply freak me out and kind of suck.

[nilky]

Yeah. With Brian and Badverb.
But... I am, in general, afraid of flying, haven't been on a plane since 1990... but this I'd do, given the wealth.

[Brian]

I'm with Brian, except that my skydiving experience has shown me I hate weightlessness. So if I had that kind of cash, I'd want to go, but be afraid it would simply freak me out and kind of suck.

The price includes training in weightlessness (using the White Knight aircraft), so hopefully you can get over any tendency toward spacesickness before the launch.

In my one skydiving experience, I loved the freefall, but I hated the swinging back and forth under the canopy. The latter is what made me a bit nauseated...

[wilderness]

I'd definitely do it in some phantom world where I had unlimited money. I understand the environmental concerns, but... space. Hopefully in my lifetime manned spaceflight to Mars will be commonplace.

[fuzzyjelly]

I would go if I had the money, no question. I hope that there will be better opportunities in the future to go further and see more.

I'm pretty selfish because not only did I not consider the environmental factors, I didn't even much care about them now that I have. This may also be because it's a pipe dream and I'm not really going so it's not real.

Seeing the pictures of the seats and windows inside gave me chills. It's straight out of a sci-fi movie and it's real. It's here and soon it will be taking people up. I can't see this as anything other than amazingly cool.