Branson unveils new rocket to take thrill-seekers into space

The Long Beach company unveiled the new ship, VSS Unity, at Mojave Air & Space Port Friday.

SpaceShipTwo is created to be flown by a crew of two and carry up to six passengers on a suborbital flight to the fringes of space for a few minutes of weightlessness and a view of the Earth below. Nearly one of the $250,000 tickets. Our handsome new spaceship, VSS Unity, is the embodiment of that goal and will provide us with an unprecedented body of experience which will in turn lay the foundations for Virgin Galactic’s future. Aside from merely showing off its latest spaceship model, Virgin must accomplish the incredibly hard task of convincing its investors, partners, and customers – you know, the people who will one day trust it to take them to space.

The SpaceShipTwo is Virgin Galactic’s follow-up to the company’s previous spaceship, which suffered an unfortunate demise.

Ahead of Friday’s unveil, Virgin Galactic pledged meticulous testing of new safety requirements for VSS Unity. “We learned a lot from the accident, and we made a lot of changes”, said Mike Moses, a former NASA shuttle manager who now oversees spaceflight operations for Galactic.

A probe by the National Transportation Safety Board found the crash was caused by a “catastrophic structural failure” triggered when the co-pilot unlocked the craft’s braking system too early. The new vehicle – which was already under construction when VSS Enterprise was lost – features safeguards that will protect against the premature deployment of the feathering system, Virgin representatives have said.

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

According to company Chief Executive George Whitesides, Branson’s Virgin Group and Aabar Investments (run by the Abu Dhabi government) have invested more than $500 million in Virgin Galactic.

“In time we will go on to doing orbital flights, which could be as long as two or three weeks”, he added.

The private space tourism company revealed the plane during an event at the Mojave Air and Spaceport in California.

Don’t expect to buy a pricey pass on to a flight any time soon: Company officials have not released a final date on the start of passenger flights, and have outlined extensive tests that must be completed before they consider allowing passengers.

More than 700 people are said to have signed up for the flights so far, including actor Leonardo DiCaprio and physicist Stephen Hawking.