The sky's the limit for Virgin

Virgin Galactic

Two days ago Virgin Galactic's VSS Enterprise, attached to its mothership, the VSS Eve, successfully completed the very first test flight.

At 7:05am (PST), the craft that Richard Branson hopes will be the flagship vehicle for commercial journeys into space took off on an two hour 53 minute flight achieving an altitude of 45,000 feet. More test flights are scheduled throughout the year and the next phase of testing will be to glide independently from the mothership, followed by independent powered flight.

Virgin claim that once the Enterprise breaks free from the mothership, it will use a single hybrid rocket to blast itself about 110km into the thermosphere at a speed of 4200km/h - faster than the world's fastest military jets. Acceleration to Mach 3 and beyond will be achieved using a mixture of nitrous oxide and a rubber-based solid fuel. Data on CO2 emissions have not been released, but they are likely to make uncomfortable reading for environmentalists.

"Seeing the finished spaceship in December was a major day for us but watching VSS Enterprise fly for the first time really brings home what beautiful, groundbreaking vehicles Burt and his team have developed for us," said Sir Richard.

"This is a very big spaceship so you have got a lot of room to float around, lots of windows to look out. There will be two astronauts at the front, but the six passengers will be astronauts by the time they are finished," he added.

Virgin Galactic said the flight test program will run through 2011 before passenger travel is scheduled to begin in 2012.

That's good news for the over 330 people who have already stumped up the cash to reserve their spot on the Enterprise, to the tune of $200,000. A further 80,000 people sit on the Virgin Galactic waiting list.

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Daniel Jones

Daniel is a Politics and Philosophy graduate from Cardiff University where he also worked as a section editor on the award winning student newspaper. After university he joined an IT support company where he was a B2B online writer. He loves anything to do with sport and joined GDS in July 2009.

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