Space Travel Anyone?

Back in July the SpaceShipTwo, Virgin Galactic's newest suborbital spaceplane (to take tourists into space), went on a flight with the full crew. The flight lasted for 6 hours, but the SpaceShipTwo remained attached to it's mothership, the VMS Eve.

Now more recently on Sunday October 10th, the SpaceShipTwo went on its first solo glide flight. The ship took off with the VMS Eve carrying it to an altitude of 45,000 feet, at which point the SpaceShipTwo disconnected from the mothership and glided for 11 minutes before safely landing at the Runway 30 in the Mojave Air and Space Port.

The purpose of this flight was to establish a clean release from the mothership, and to free glide and land back at the Mojave Air and Space Port. Both of these goals were accomplished, and will help Virgin Galactic meet its goals to have a commercial flight into space next year.

So far, the company has 370 customer deposits, totaling to a value of $50 million. The company plans to have future operations in New Mexico's Spaceport America.

In case you're curious, tickets cost $200,000 and have a deposit of $20,000. If you just so happen to be interested in booking a flight, you can do that here.

In other news...

-Teguh