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Virgin Galactic is the world’s first commercial spaceline, and our purpose is to connect people across the globe to the love, wonder and awe created by space travel. We believe that spaceflight has the unique ability to shift our perspectives, our technology, and even our trajectory as a species. As the spaceline for Earth, we aim to ...
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Virgin Galactic was founded in 2004 by British entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, who had previously founded the Virgin Group and the Virgin Atlantic airline, and who had a long personal history of balloon and surface record-breaking activities. As part of Branson's promotion of the firm, he has added a variation of the Virgin Galactic livery to his personal business jet, the Dassault Falcon ...
May 30, 2023 · Virgin Galactic is a private space tourism company founded by billionaire businessman Richard Branson in 2004. Branson registered the Virgin Galactic business name in 1999, and it is included in ...
The future of space travel has arrived. Learn about the Virgin Galactic experience and future availability of spaceflight ticket sales. Do not enter any confidential or privileged information. Virgin Galactic is launching a new space age, where all are invited along for the ride.
- Overview
- When will Virgin Galactic start space tourism and how much will it cost?
- Who owns Virgin Galactic and where is it based?
- What are Virgin Galactic's long-term goals?
- Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity supersonic suborbital spaceplane
- The test program so far
- What will Virgin Galactic space tourists experience?
- The trip to space and back
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News
By Jamie Carter
published 5 June 2019
The world’s first spaceliner?
Is Virgin Galactic almost ready to begin space tourism? (Image credit: Virgin Galactic)
Who needs an airline when you can have a spaceline? Aiming to become the first regular commercial spaceliner, Virgin Galactic founder Sir Richard Branson first promised to take people to space in 2004, and most years since has predicted that his ‘spaceliner of the future’ was on the cusp of beginning service.
Branson says he expects to fly on the company’s SpaceShipTwo suborbital vehicle in 2019, possibly on July 16 to mark 2019's 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 launch. About 600 'future astronauts' are signed up and have each put down a $20,000 (about £15,000, AU$30,000) deposit, though the final cost of tickets is $250,000 (about £190,000, AU$360,00...
Virgin Galactic is part of the Virgin Group, which is owned by British billionaire entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson. The Virgin Group also includes the likes of Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Holidays, Virgin Radio, Virgin Rail, Virgin Money and Virgin Mobile, as well as Virgin Hyperloop One, which is trying to build an ultra-high-speed ‘people pipeline’.
Virgin Galactic has two sister companies, Virgin Orbit (which launches small satellites from a Boeing 747) and The SpaceShip Company, which builds and tests the VSS Unity. A major investor in all three was supposed to be Saudi Arabia at US$1 billion, but that was cancelled by Branson after the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey in October 2018.
An incredibly ambitious man and expert self-publicist, Branson is less gung-ho about space than Elon Musk at SpaceX and Jeff Bezos at Blue Origin.
"Your lives will be transformed by space," he wrote in a video-letter to his grandchildren after SpaceShipTwo made it to space for the first time in December 2018. "It will give your generation the planetary perspective on which the future of humanity rests, that we're all in this together on spaceship Earth."
Branson believes that as many people as possible need to see the curvature of the Earth from space to get a taste of the powerful 'overview effect' that many astronauts report feeling after coming back from space. If we all see Earth from space, we are all soon realise how irrelevant national boundaries and cultural differences are.
That's a pretty different perspective to that of Musk and Bezos, who both want to go much further than the edge of the Earth's atmosphere.
Virgin Galactic is very serious about space tourism. Its VSS Unity spaceplane is a supersonic vehicle designed and built by sister company The Spaceship Company. It's based on Scaled Composites' SpaceShipOne, the first manned private rocket to reach space, in 2004 (VSS Unity and its forbear VSS Enterprise were formerly called SpaceShipTwo).
It has two seats for the pilots and six for passengers, but how it gets to space is unusual. It gets part of the way to space while attached to the undercarriage of a custom-made carrier aircraft called VMS Eve (formerly called WhiteKnightTwo) before it detaches and launches itself into space.
VSS Unity has successfully been to space twice. It first did so in December 2018 when pilots Mark Stucky and CJ Sturckow (plus some NASA payloads and a mannequin called Annie) reached 51.4 miles.
In February 2019 it reached space for the second time. It was VSS Unity's fifth rocket-powered flight test flight, and onboard this time were three people; pilots Dave Mackay and Michael Masucci, plus Beth Moses, Virgin Galactic’s Chief Astronaut Instructor.
'Astronaut wings' go to anyone who reaches 50 miles, though since the Kármán line at 62 miles up is generally accepted to be where space begins, that’s probably where Virgin Galactic is ultimately aiming to reach.
However, the test program hasn't been without problems. There have been two dramatic setbacks that have cost four lives, most recently co-pilot Michael Alsbury during an accident in October 2014.
Supersonic speeds, weightlessness, a view of the curvature of Earth, then more supersonic speeds. However, it's all pretty different from what Blue Origin is on the cusp of offering with its vertical take-off New Shepherd suborbital rocket. Six Virgin Galactic customers will arrive at Spaceport New Mexico four days before the scheduled flight for m...
On the fourth day, after getting strapped into their reclining seats in VSS Unity, the mothership VMS Eve will take-off on a runway and climb to 50,000 feet Now comes the fun bit; VSS Unity detaches and fires its rocket-powered engines for 63 seconds, surging towards space at three-and-a-half times the speed of sound.
That in itself will be an incredible experience for any ‘space tourist’, but it's also followed by four minutes of weightlessness, and a chance to see the Earth from space, before a descent at three times the speed of sound. That will be some rush. Finally, the VSS Unity will land back on the runway at Spaceport New Mexico, 1.5-2 hours after it took off.
A four-day commitment and a 2.5-hour ride make Virgin Galactic's space tourism experience far longer than the 11 minutes Blue Origin could soon offer. Is Virgin Galactic worth the $250,000? It looks like a bargain to us.
•Blue Origin: everything you need to know
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Jul 11, 2021 · Virgin Galactic was to repeat this kind of event many times down the years, allowing journalists and other visitors to swarm over the replica. The company would point out features such as the ...
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Jun 9, 2024 · 9 June 2024. Virgin Galactic has completed its second spaceflight of 2024 and 12th mission to date, carrying one researcher and three private astronauts. Yesterday’s ‘Galactic 07’ flight marks Virgin Galactic’s seventh research mission with VSS Unity again serving as a suborbital lab for space-based scientific research.
