Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo Completes Second Supersonic Flight Successfully

Sir Richard Branson's rolled up sleeves to make the space flights accessible to (wealthy) humans. His company, Virgin Galactic, is on a mission of developing spaceships that will carry humans into the space offering spectacular views of the 'dark sky' and the Earth and bring them back - all like a roller coaster ride. The 'SpaceShipTwo' as it's called, will be the spaceship that will carry the humans in the space. It will however be ferried to sufficient 'launch heights' by another aircraft, called WhiteKnightTwo.


At the Mojave Air & Space port in California, the SpaceShipTwo successfully completed its second test flight. The carrier plane, WhiteKnightTwo took the SpaceShipTwo to an altitude of about 40,000 ft., the rockets were fired and the SpaceShipTwo attained an altitude of about 69,000 ft at Mach 1.4. The engine however, operated for about 20 seconds only. The ship was under control of the pilots Mark Stucky and Clint Nichols. This was the first test of the ship's new wing-tilting re-entry system.

According to Sir Richard Branson, the company is perfectly on track and the first commercial flight will be scheduled in 2014. Most of the world's leading celebrities have booked the tickets already and while the rest of us can't afford it; we can always watch videos. Embedded below is the video of the second test flight. Check out the engineering marvel in development -