Here Is Our First Look at Virgin Galactic’s New Space Plane

Two years ago , Virgin Galactic ’s SpaceshipTwo , the space sheet it hoped to habituate to institutionalize tourists into space , fail on a test flight andcrashed in the desert . Now , it ’s divulge a brand Modern variation of SpaceShipTwo .

Virgin Galactic rolled - out the new SpaceShipTwo — the VSS Unity , as named by Stephen Hawking — in its Mohave airdock late this good afternoon . The society also relinquish a serial publication of photos , which you could check over out below . If this blade raw plane already bet pretty familiar to you , though , there ’s a reason .

This fresh infinite planing machine is incredibly like — with some small mods — to the one that crashed in the desert due to an “ in - flight anomaly ” during Virgin Galactic ’s mental test escape in 2014 , killing one airplane pilot and injuring its other archetype . It ’s a similaritythat Virgin itself mention , say this novel woodworking plane was “ so similar to its herald , we profit from incredibly useful information from 55 successful test flights as well as the brutal but significant lessons from one tragical flight trial accident . ”

William Duplessie

Replicating all that prior testing means that , for today , the new SpaceShipTwo wo n’t be leaving the terra firma at all . Once on - ground psychometric test have wrapped up , it will finally head out for a paired trajectory , where it stays attached to a mother ship . From there , it goes through a serial of glide tests , where a original will steer the plane through escalating low - altitude drifts . Only when all of these have been finished , will SpaceShipTwo finally get its rocket test . Initially , it will be going on lower sub - orbital flights which , at 100,000 feet will still be enough for lightness . Their eventual program is to collide with “ official astronaut distance”—over 50 land mile above our surface .

Of course , for many people the more important question is n’t when will examination be land up , it ’s when will they start taking tours up there — and that remains the enceinte undetermined motion . Certainly , space tourism is what Virgin Galactic has its eyes ready on ( in addition to flight , Richard Branson has also tossed around the approximation of a distance hotel ) , and they’vealready started construction on a third space planeof the same model for commercial usage . The crash of SpaceShipTwo ’s successor has raised questions , though , about both the safety and plausibility of send tourists in the near future .

For now , SpaceShipTwo ( and its currently in - grammatical construction heir ) stay on firmly on the ground , and with so many beat examination ahead it is not likely to be a particularly quick process to get it up into space . For those of who go for to have the chance within our life to someday volume outer space tour of our own , though , SpaceShipTwo sure as shooting at least has our attention .

Starship Test 9