Virgin Galactic reveals updated passenger spacecraft and restarts test flights

Professor Stephen Hawking has announced the world is “entering a new space age” as he helped to unveil the new Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo.

Virgin Galactic has rolled out a new version of its SpaceShipTwo space tourism rocket, replacing the craft destroyed in a 2014 accident that killed a pilot. The new SpaceShipTwo will now become Virgin Galactic’s main vehicle, although the final decision will depend on the performance of the space plane.

Virgin Galactic revealed its new Unity spaceship on Friday, which it hopes will be the first vehicle to take tourists to space.

“When we had the space accident, that gave us 24 hours of soul searching”, said billionaire Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Galactic parent Virgin Group of London at a Thursday panel discussion in downtown.

The SpaceShipTwo is similar to its predecessor as it will benefit by using data from 55 successful test flights.

In a press release about the new spacecraft, Virgin Galactic said it was committed to thorough testing, and that it’s not in a “race”.

“We will send people to space once pilots have tested the ship time and time and time again”, Sir Richard told the ITV show.

More than 700 people have already signed up to fly into space with Virgin Galactic from Spaceport America in New Mexico. And it is clearly eager, after years of delays, to start flying the hundreds of people, including celebrities such as Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks, who spent as much as $250,000 on tickets.

SpaceShipTwo is created to take a crew of two pilots and up to six passengers to space.

During its official “launch”, the craft remained on the tarmac at the desert base in Mojave, some 100 miles north-east of Los Angeles. Whether Virgin considers itself embroiled in a competition to get the first paying customers to space or not, we’re positive the thought that’s been haunting Richard Branson the last several months is “who says Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos gets to have all the fun?” Once completed, it intends to move on to captive carry flight testing to prepare for a series of glide flights at roughly 45,000 feet in altitude.

Currently, Virgin Galactic is not the only company trying to launch humans to edge of the space.

BOB RIHA JR/EPA The space ship was unveiled during a spectacular show in the Mojave Air & Space Port, north of Los Angeles.

Despite the setback, Sir Richard Branson said that after some soul searching the company chose to push ahead with its vision of sending commercial passengers into space. The first time it takes to the skies will be when it’s carried by a mothership, WhiteKnightTwo.