Virgin Galactic shows off new spaceship
Source: USA Today
Virgin Galactic shows off new spaceship
Trevor Hughes, USA TODAY 9:24 p.m. EST February 19, 2016
MOJAVE, Calif. — Virgin Galactic unveiled its gleaming new spaceship Friday, the first craft specifically designed to carry paying customers to space and return them safety to Earth.
The new blue, silver and white VSS Unity will undergo extensive testing on the ground and in unpowered flight before pilots fire up its rocket for flight tests. The company hasn’t yet released a schedule for when it may begin carrying passengers aloft, instead insisting they will launch only when ready. Unity replaces a similar model destroyed in an Oct. 31, 2014 crash, although that model was built primarily as a test craft and was never intended to carry customers. Unity, however, will pull double duty: It will finish out flight testing and then become the world’s first commercial space shuttle, its creators hope.
“It’s pretty cool to be taking people to space,” Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson said Friday at an unveiling ceremony at the Mojave Air and Spaceport.
Among the first astronauts scheduled to fly with Virgin is physicist Stephen Hawking, who contributed the craft’s name following the destruction of its predecessor in an accident that also claimed the life of one of its two pilots. That crash had the potential to be a profound setback for the company, but Branson said every employee took stock and decided to press on. Unity has a variety of subtle design changes making it safer and more efficient, including a change to the “feather” mechanism that helps it descend.
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Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2016/02/19/virgin-galactic-shows-off-new-spaceship/80624812/
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