A photo from open sources
American private space company “Virgin Galactic” made a breakthrough during a recent test of its tourist suborbital spaceplane “SpaceShipTwo”, having conquered the line so called “space altitude.” According to the US Air Force, she is about 80 kilometers, however the company’s aircraft “Virgin Galactic” rose to a record height of almost 83 kilometers above the surface of our planet.
SpaceShipTwo was lifted into the sky by a carrier aircraft “WhiteKnightTwo”. Like previous space launches, today’s was produced from an airfield in the Mojave Desert, California. The mother plane rose to a height of 14 kilometers and freed “SpaceShipTwo”, after which the latter turned on the engine and, having passed stratosphere, reached the mesosphere. Manned speed suborbital spacecraft exceeded the speed of sound at 2.9 times.
Mesosphere, as you know, is a kind of “dead zone” on the way to space. The air here is so thin that ordinary planes and balloons at this altitude can no longer fly. Not less, at the same time, the air of the mesosphere is too dense for flights satellites. To the Karman line, officially separating the Earth’s atmosphere from space, “SpaceShipTwo” did not reach about 17.3 kilometers. I.e while we are still talking about a “fake” space.
A photo from open sources
Virgin Galactic has spent 14 years developing and testing this technology, having lost in 2014 test pilot during an accident. British billionaire Richard Branson, the owner of this company, was personally present at recent trials and after their successful completion stated that the first flight of SpaceShipTwo with tourists on board will take place in March 2019, and Branson himself will become one of the passengers of the spaceplane.
SpaceShipTwo Space Shuttle It was created exclusively for the transport of tourists. Flight cost lasting about two hours will be about a quarter million dollars. Onboard the ship will be two pilots and six passengers. During such a flight, they will experience weightlessness and see our “blue ball” from a height of hundreds of kilometers. Reportedly that the company has already sold several hundred tickets.
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