Aerospace company Virgin Galactic took paying customers into space for the first time on Thursday. On board were three Italians who carried out research and carried the Italian flag at the highest point.
The rocket, which was suspended under an airplane, was launched from Spaceport America in the US state of New Mexico. The missile separated from the plane at an altitude of about 14 kilometers, and then launched into the air. The passengers remained weightless for several minutes and then raised their national flags. Then the plane returned to the ground.
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Virgin Galactic, a project of British entrepreneur Richard Branson, has been in the test flight phase for about twenty years. The company competes with Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin. They all want to sell space tourism.
New era
The company itself has spoken of a “new era” for space travel, something spaceflight expert Rob van den Berg of the Sonnenburg Observatory agrees with. “It’s the beginning of a new era for themselves,” he says, “because they’ve had some setbacks.” “But now Virgin Galactic is joining the list of providers that offer space tourism.”
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So Van den Berg believes that Branson and his company can compete with the American influence of SpaceX and Blue Origin (by Tesla owner Elon Musk and Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, ed.). “The market is very large,” he concludes. “And precisely because Branson offers flights in a different way — you end up in the cabin of a real plane, where you can float freely — I think the market is big enough.”
“The market is big enough for Virgin Galactic”
Virgin Galactic said ahead of its launch Thursday that a successful flight will pave the way for another flight in August and monthly flights thereafter. It is said that about eight hundred people have already booked a flight with the company. They would have paid between $250,000 and $450,000 (between €230,000 and €415,000) per seat.
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