Pay Rs. 96 Lakh for a trip to space
Los Angeles: Flamboyant British entrepreneur Richard Branson Monday unveiled the world's first commercial spaceship, saying it heralded a new age in travel.
"We want this programme to be a whole new beginning in a commercial era of space travel," Branson said of the 20 metre long craft, SpaceShip Two.
The eight-seater, rocket-powered vehicle was unveiled at a site in the Mojave desert, California. Branson said that after testing in 2010 he hopes the revolutionary spacecraft will be ready to start commercial flights from a space port currently under construction in New Mexico, by 2011.
Branson's company has already collected $42 million from a lengthy roster of would-be space travellers paying $200,000 each for a two-and-a-half-hour ride on SpaceShip Two.
The craft will be carried to a height of 50,000 feet by the WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft, from where it will fire its own rocket motor and climb to 110 km above Earth, allowing passengers to experience six minutes of weightlessness and see the curvature of the Earth.
"NASA spent billions upon billions of dollars on space travel and has only managed to send 480 people," Branson said. "We're literally hoping to send thousands of people into space over the next couple of years. We want to make sure that we build a spaceship that is 100-percent safe."
"We want this programme to be a whole new beginning in a commercial era of space travel," Branson said of the 20 metre long craft, SpaceShip Two.
The eight-seater, rocket-powered vehicle was unveiled at a site in the Mojave desert, California. Branson said that after testing in 2010 he hopes the revolutionary spacecraft will be ready to start commercial flights from a space port currently under construction in New Mexico, by 2011.
Branson's company has already collected $42 million from a lengthy roster of would-be space travellers paying $200,000 each for a two-and-a-half-hour ride on SpaceShip Two.
The craft will be carried to a height of 50,000 feet by the WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft, from where it will fire its own rocket motor and climb to 110 km above Earth, allowing passengers to experience six minutes of weightlessness and see the curvature of the Earth.
"NASA spent billions upon billions of dollars on space travel and has only managed to send 480 people," Branson said. "We're literally hoping to send thousands of people into space over the next couple of years. We want to make sure that we build a spaceship that is 100-percent safe."
Replies
You are reading an archived discussion.
Related Posts
Amain Infotech is an offshore software and web design & development company based in Chennai, India offers website designing, software applications, website application development, content management system, software project maintenance,...
Phishing is a way using which scammers trick internet users out of their personal details and also financial details after which they take ownership of email accounts.
See this email...
It has just been discovered that a critical security hole in the latest version of FreeBSD can be exploited to grant unprivileged users absolute full control over the operating system...
Today Facebook is rolling out a new set of more granular privacy controls to its 350 million members. Founder Mark Zuckerberg already announced the changes on December 1, but today...
Watch the new Dishtv commercial which has already created waves because of the new look of King Khan
[youtube]