Virgin Galactic Considering Hypersonic Airline Travel
In principle, Virgin Galactic and NASA’s Ames research group would work together to develop hybrid rocket motors and the study of vehicles that travel faster than Mach 5. Dan Coughlin from NASA’s Marshall Flight Center will work with Virgin Galactic. With these kinds of speeds, Virgin could offer customers trips across the world that would only take a couple of hours.
Until now, Virgin Galactic has been working with Scaled Composites to develop a larger version of SpaceShipOne, the vehicle that won the X-prize in October, 2004. Adventurous space tourists will pay about $200,000 USD to fly on SpaceShipTwo to an altitude of 100km and enjoy 6 minutes of weightlessness.
There just aren’t a lot of details right now. I’ll see what else I can dig up.
Original Source: Flightglobal article
Recent Posts
Dinkinesh's Moonlet is Only 2-3 Million Years Old
Last November, NASA's Lucy mission conducted a flyby of the asteroid Dinkinish, one of the…
The Universe Could Be Filled With Ultralight Black Holes That Can't Die
Steven Hawking famously calculated that black holes should evaporate, converting into particles and energy over…
Starlink on Mars? NASA Is Paying SpaceX to Look Into the Idea
NASA has given the go-ahead for SpaceX to work out a plan to adapt its…
Did You Hear Webb Found Life on an Exoplanet? Not so Fast…
The JWST is astronomers' best tool for probing exoplanet atmospheres. Its capable instruments can dissect…
Vera Rubin’s Primary Mirror Gets its First Reflective Coating
First light for the Vera Rubin Observatory (VRO) is quickly approaching and the telescope is…
Two Stars in a Binary System are Very Different. It's Because There Used to be Three
A beautiful nebula in the southern hemisphere with a binary star at it's center seems…