Picture by Reuters: Branson (left), Rutan and the spacefrafts.
Folks, if you want to go to space, save your every penny now, including those earned from Adsense ads, because space travel is coming to reality.
Yesterday, maverick entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson and aircraft designer Burt Rutan unveilled two new aircrafts — SpaceShipTwo and its carrier airplane, WhiteKnightTwo — that will carry human into space.
According to a New York Times report:
WhiteKnight, a two-fuselage, four-engine plane in its new incarnation, will ferry the smaller spacecraft high into the sky and release it. The spacecraft pilot then fires the craft’s rocket engine, which burns a combination of nitrous oxide and a rubber-based solid fuel, and shoots the vehicle upward to an altitude of more than 62 miles, the realm of black sky.
Once there, the pilot is to activate the craft’s innovative feathered wing, which rotates into a position that greatly increases aerodynamic drag and slows the craft for a glider landing back on earth.
The report further stated that:
WhiteKnight aircraft is 70 percent complete and that SpaceShipTwo is 60 percent complete. Test flights of the planes could occur this year. Passenger flights are not expected to begin before late 2009 or 2010.
There was no mention of the cost one needs to pay to travel to space but the report said:
About 100 of the company’s prospective passengers were on hand at the unveiling in Manhattan Wednesday.
Stephen Attenborough, the company’s liaison with its clients — or, as the company calls them, its astronauts — said that Virgin Galactic had received 200 firm reservations and $30 million in deposits.
Virgin Galactic is the aerospace company founded by Branson.
So, Tony, Branson is you good friend, so will there be AirAsia S — S for space — coming our way, offering no-frills space travel with the tagline, “Now Everyone Can Fly To Space”?
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Ok, this is just wrong. Of course, since I’m afraid to fly, that might be my problem with it, but still. Flying to space for fun? No thanks. LOL
Are you dating a caveman?
In Tophero: Son of Smilodon, our heroine takes an interplanetary trip to the edge of the Solar System and found her love in a caveman-like creature with a stunning secret regarding his origin… who eventually turns out to be the long lost son of earthly centebillionaire Jack Lone.
Not entirely different from the perspective of “Crocodile Dundee,” women enjoy meeting a simple, untainted, childlike man who has a heart of gold, besides reciting Shakespearean verses and studying Henry Kissinger’s Diplomacy, who also tame giant prehistoric beasts on the fly.
Charity, am afraid of flying too. I once had a blog on the issue of aviophobia but it’s dormant now.. maybe I should reactivate it.