After more than five years of waiting, Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo is ready to be unveiled to the public tonight at a ceremony in the Mojave desert. Following on the success of SpaceShipOne in 2004, the six passenger SpaceShipTwo already has a backlog of more than 300 passengers who are waiting for their ride into space.
Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson, legendary aerospace designer Burt Rutan and a host of VIPs are gathered at a hangar at Scaled Composites in Mojave where SpaceShipTwo is set to have the covers removed later this evening. The spacecraft has been built in almost total secrecy starting in 2007. The vehicle to be unveiled tonight is expected to be the first of six or seven that will make up a fleet of spacecraft operating out of the Virgin Galactic space port in New Mexico.
SpaceShipTwo is larger than its predecessor, SpaceShipOne, the first private manned spacecraft that won the Ansari X-Prize in 2004. Using a similar design as SpaceShipOne, the larger SpaceShipTwo will also be dropped from a larger White Knight Two aircraft before igniting a rocket motor that will carry the two pilots and six passengers to an altitude of more than 62 miles. From that vantage point, passengers will be able to see the curvature of the earth, the deep black sky of space and will even have a few minutes to unbuckle their seatbelts and float around the cabin.
After the fasten seatbelt sign is turned back on, SpaceShipTwo will utilize the same feather mode reentry where the spacecraft will descend back into the atmosphere similar to a badminton birdie. Once in the atmosphere, pilots will return the wing to its flying position and land SpaceShipTwo on the runway like the space shuttle or any other glider.
Flight testing is expected to begin early next year. First flights will be captive carry flights with SpaceShipTwo staying attached to White Knight Two. After that the flight test team will begin glide flights in SpaceShipTwo and eventually powered flights with the rocket motor. Once flight testing is complete and the government regulations have been met, Virgin Galactic plans to regularly fly passengers into space from the company's New Mexico space port.
"SS2 has been designed to take many thousands of private astronauts into space after test programming and all required U.S. government licensing has been completed," Virgin Galactic said in a statement.
Stay tuned for more details after the unveiling later tonight.
Images: Virgin Galactic
