The First Human Virgin Galactic Spaceflight Lifted Off

The first passengers on Virgin Galactic's first space flight experienced weightlessness before returning to Spaceport America in the New Mexico desert.

After years of repeated delays, Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic has finally completed its first private customer trip and will now join other succesfull companies such as Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Elon Musk's SpaceX in selling monthly flights to space tourists.

The experience of competing in the canoeing event at the 1972 Summer Olympics was "the most fantastic thing I've ever done in my life," stated Olympic canoeist Jon Goodwin. Goodwin, now 80 years old, bought a Virgin Galactic ticket in 2005 and worried he wouldn't be able to use it since he was subsequently diagnosed with the severe Parkinson's disease. He has now cycled down from the summit of Kilimanjaro, and he hopes that his trip will serve as inspiration to those living with Parkinson's and other conditions. At the time Goodwin bought his ticket, the price was $200,000. The new price is $450.000.

Health coach and sweepstakes winner Keisha Schahaff, 46, of Antigua, and her daughter, University of Aberdeen student Anastatia Mayers, 18, also accompanied him on the journey. As the throng at the spaceport welcomed their homecoming, the crew members high-fived each other and pounded their fists.

This voyage was historic since it was for the first time that more women than males were on board a spaceship. Family and friends watching from the ground cheered when the craft's rocket motor launched after being freed from the twin-fuselage aircraft that had carried it into the air. During the rocket ship's 15-minute segment of the mission, the plane went 55 miles into the air.

Virgin Galactic has made six previous spaceflights since 2018, but this was the first one to have a paying passenger. The number of persons on Virgin Galactic's waiting list is about 800 at the present time.

Unlike Virgin Galactic's plane-launched rocket ship, the SpaceX and Blue Origin capsules are totally autonomous and return to Earth by parachute.

Blue Origin, like Virgin Galactic, plans to launch from West Texas and explore the solar system's furthest reaches. Thirty-one individuals have been launched by Blue Origin thus far, but flights have been suspended after a rocket explosion last October. However, the cargo capsule safely touched down.

Only SpaceX offers full orbital flights to paying clients, albeit at a far costlier price of millions of dollars per ticket. Since 2020, SpaceX has been NASA's primary client, transporting humans to and from the International Space Station.

The recent tragedy of the Titan submarine highlights the hazards that people can face on adventure travel experiences. In 2014, one of Virgin Galactic's pilots was killed after the company's prototype rocket aircraft disintegrated during flight. Despite this, space tourists continue to sign up for trips, even though the first one only went into orbit in 2001 thanks to the Russians.

 

Source: travelweekly.com