Virgin Galactic announced Friday that it has become the first company to get permission from the Federal Aviation Administration to bring customers to space.
The FAA’s decision came around a month after Virgin Galactic’s successful test flight of the VSS Unity, a model in the company’s SpaceShipTwo class of spaceplanes. Two pilots on the VSS Unity climbed to an altitude of 55.5 miles before landing on Earth on May 22, completing the company’s third crewed suborbital spaceflight.
Thus far, Virgin Galactic has only had approval to fly employees on its spaceplanes. The new clearance will allow billionaire and Virgin founder Richard Branson to head into space aboard a SpaceShipTwo. It’s not likely that Branson will make it to space before fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos, whose ascent is planned for July 20, as Virgin Galactic stated it still needs to test its spaceplanes with full crews.
Virgin Galactic hasn’t laid out a specific plan for its fully crewed test flights, but in Friday’s announcement, the company said they’ll begin this summer.
SpaceShipTwo was first revealed to the world in 2009, and its first test flight was in 2013. The VSS Unity first crossed the barrier into space in 2018.
Fellow private space companies Blue Origin (headed by Bezos) and SpaceX are also gunning for FAA approval for customers. Blue Origin’s New Shephard rocket has gone on several successful uncrewed test flights, including an astronaut rehearsal flight in April. SpaceX has run three crewed flights on its Crew Dragon spacecraft, including one crewed test and two operational flights to the International Space Station, but it has not moved into crewed tests for its Starship rocket.
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While these three companies all harbor similar space tourism goals, Virgin Galactic’s approach is about as different as you can get mechanically. SpaceX and Blue Origin rockets launch vertically from the ground. Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo launches horizontally from the air.
As shown in the video above, the VSS Unity is taken into the upper atmosphere under a mother ship dubbed White Knight Two, which takes off from a runway like most airplanes. Then White Knight Two releases the spaceplane, which takes off and begins a vertical climb. When it lands, it lands like an airplane.
If you’re keen on getting up into space, you can register on the Virgin Galactic website. You may need to wait a while though, and cough up quite a bit of change.
