Virgin Galactic rocket plane carried aloft for commercial launch to space

NEW MEXICO, United States - A twin-fuselage jet carrying Virgin Galactic’s rocket plane with a three-man crew from Italy took off into the New Mexico sky on Thursday for a high-altitude launch of the company’s first flight of paying customers to the edge of space.

Two Italian air force colonels and an aerospace engineer from the National Research Council of Italy were strapped into the spaceplane with their Virgin Galactic instructor and its two pilots for a suborbital ride taking the six men about 80km above the desert floor.

The flight marks a decisive moment for Virgin Galactic Holding, the space tourism venture founded by British billionaire Richard Branson in 2004, as it inaugurates commercial service following several years fraught with development setbacks.

Virgin becomes the latest commercial enterprise, along with Mr Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and fellow billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX, catering to wealthy customers willing to pay large sums of money to experience the exhilaration of supersonic rocket speed, microgravity and the spectacle of the Earth’s curvature from space.

The mission of the Italian team flying on Thursday, however, was billed as a scientific one.

The three men planned to collect biometric data, measure cognitive performance and record how certain liquids and solids mix in microgravity conditions.

For Italian Air Force Colonel Walter Villadei, designated as commander, the flight aboard the spaceplane, dubbed VSS Unity, is also part of his astronaut training for a future mission to the International Space Station.

His two Italian colleagues on the flight were Air Force Lieutenant-Colonel Angelo Landolfi, a doctor and flight surgeon, and Mr Pantaleone Carlucci, a research council member acting as flight engineer and payload specialist.

Rounding out the crew was their Virgin Galactic trainer, Mr Colin Bennett, the company’s lead “astronaut instructor”, and Unity’s two pilots, Mr Michael Masucci and Mr Nicola Pecile.

The gleaming white rocket plane was borne aloft at around 10.30am local time (10.30pm Singapore time) attached to the underside of its transport jet, VMS Eve, as the carrier plane took off from Spaceport America near the New Mexico town of Truth or Consequences.

Unity is designed to separate from its dual-fuselage mothership at an altitude of about 15.24km, then fall away as the pilots ignite the vehicle’s engine to send the rocket plane streaking in a near-vertical climb at about three times the speed of sound to the blackness of space some 80km to 89km high.

At the apex of the flight, the crew will experience a few minutes of weightlessness with the engine shut off before the craft shifts into re-entry mode and glides back to the spaceport for a runway landing. The entire flight, from takeoff to touchdown, should take no more than about 90 minutes.

Evolving business model

The flight comes two years after Mr Branson himself rode along with five other Virgin Galactic personnel for the first fully crewed test spaceflight of Unity in July 2021. At the time, the company was targeting regular commercial service to begin in 2022, following additional test flights.

But completion of the test programme took longer than anticipated after United States federal regulators grounded Unity for 11 weeks. During that time, the company was under investigation for deviating from its assigned airspace on ascent during the July 2021 flight.

A final crewed test flight to space was conducted with little fanfare five weeks ago.

Thursday’s flight profile was expected to largely follow the sequence of events when Unity flew two years ago and again in May. If all goes smoothly, Unity will fly again in early August, with monthly flights thereafter, the company said.

Virgin Galactic said it has booked a backlog of some 800 customers, charging from US$250,000 (S$338,000) to $450,000 per seat, and envisions eventually building a large enough fleet to accommodate 400 flights annually.

Establishing a solid safety record is critical. An earlier prototype of the Virgin Galactic rocket plane crashed during a test flight over California’s Mojave Desert in 2014, killing one pilot and seriously injuring another.

Passengers have to sign a pre-flight waiver acknowledging the risks and lack of government regulation over space tourism.

How high one goes to experience what is considered true spaceflight may also factor into the equation.

Mr Bezos, whose astro-tourist venture Blue Origin has already flown several commercial passenger flights, has disparaged Virgin as falling short of the mark.

Unlike Unity, Mr Bezos has said, Blue Origin’s suborbital New Shepard rocketship tops the 100km-high-mark, called the Karman line, set by an international aeronautics body as defining the boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and space.

Nasa and the US Air Force both define an astronaut as anyone who has flown 80km high or more. REUTERS