Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/28/virgin_galactic_test_flights_may_be_this_year/
Virgin Galactic announces test flight plans
Can Branson get it up in 2012?
Posted in Science, 28th February 2012 23:30 GMT
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Virgin Galactic has announced that it expects to go ex-atmospheric in a test flight this year.
The announcement comes hard on Virgin Galactic’s remarks [1] to Playboy magazine about long-term hopes to give space extra sex-appeal via an orbital nookie palace.
With Reuters reporting [2] that Virgin Galactic has pre-sold 500 customers, an initial suborbital test flight is arguably a more achievable goal than a billionaire’s bordello. SpaceShipTwo is being built and tested by the Burt Rutan-founded and Northrop Grumman-owned Scaled Composites.
Neil Armstrong, who needs introduction only in the style guides of newswires, says suborbital space “has been absent for about four decades”, speaking to a conference of sub-orbital researchers in California.
Virgin Galactic test pilot David Mackay told the Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference: “We hope to have the rocket motor in the spaceship later this year, and start powered flight testing”, the Reuters report states.
While the project isn’t being treated as a “Cold War-era space race”, he said that from the first powered flight to the first space flight can “flow pretty quickly … and then it’s not terribly long from there until we have our first commercial flight to space.”
Bloomberg reports [3] that the Abu Dhabi government is leveraging its 37.8 percent investment in Virgin Galactic to attract partnerships in that emirate. Its cashed-up sovereign wealth fund, Aabar Investments, has an eye-watering $US500 billion to spend, and some of that is earmarked to try and turn the oil-funded emirate into an aerospace hub.
A successful 2012 test flight could allow commercial passenger services to start in 2013 or 2014. ®