Virgin Galactic might hit another milestone today in its quest to provide trips to suborbital space. If the weather cooperates and everything goes as planned for the company, its first private passenger flight will be taking off from its Spaceport America facility at 11AM EDT. Virgin Galactic’s inaugural commercial flight took place in late June, but that one carried Italian government workers, including two Air Force personnel, to space. This time, its three passengers are civilians, and one of them is even the company’s first paying customer.
That distinction goes to Jon Goodwin, a British Olympian who competed in the 1972 games in Munich as a canoeist. According to the BBC, Goodwin paid $250,000 for his ticket way back in 2005 and had been worried that he couldn’t go through with the flight after he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2014. The other two passengers are a mother-daughter tandem from the Caribbean, Keisha Schahaff and Anastatia Mayers. Schahaff won two seats in a fundraising draw for nonprofit organization Space for Humanity and had chosen her daughter, a physics student at Aberdeen University in the UK, to accompany her.
The company’s VSS Unity spacecraft leaves the ground attached to a carrier aircraft dubbed VMS Eve. At an altitude of 50,000 feet, the mothership drops Unity, which then fires up its rocket motor to continue its journey to the edge of space. The spacecraft turns off its motor and glides across space before its descent, giving passengers three minutes to enjoy weightlessness in the cabin while looking at views of our planet through Unity’s 17 windows. That is, at least, what the passengers are supposed to experience. As for the rest of us, we can watch them take off via Virgin Galactic’s coverage of the launch livestreamed through its website.
Source: www.engadget.com