Chief Astronaut Instructor and Interiors Program Manager for Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo program Beth Moses with pilots Dave Mackay and Michael “Sooch” Masucci Image: Virgin Galactic
Virgin Galactic – One Step Closer to Space Tourism
By Patryk Krych | The World Daily MAY 13th 2020
The past hundred years of research made to progress humanity towards space travel have not been without successes. They resulted in many significant leaps towards discovery that had previously been thought nearly impossible. The first man and woman in space, the first satellites, and most well-known of all: the first man on the moon, have all been moments that stood out in our world’s history as such achievements. But now, Virgin Galactic are the ones spearheading progress towards a different kind of space travel.
Space Tourism is the company Virgin Galactic’s ambition. It differs greatly from all previous ambitions regarding space travel, in the sense that anybody with the money for it could get a chance to view the world from boundaries of its atmosphere. Where the requirements for sending an individual into space had once been daunting and expensive with specific people in mind for the role of ‘astronaut’, Virgin Galactic seeks to expand these parameters into what could eventually be the general public.
This was a dream that the company had been trying to achieve for the past decade, but is now slowly coming into reality as deals are struck and tests are proving successful. It was only last week that NASA had signed a deal with Virgin Galactic in support of their venture to make Space Tourism a reality.
The deal itself involves a sharing of both resources and insights, which would allow Virgin Galactic’s engineers access to "technologies developed over the last 50 years," according to NASA's director of Advanced Air Vehicles Program James Kenyon.
Virgin galactic SpaceShipTwo suborbital space plane
The entire idea around the space travel tourism venture has also inspired their secondary future goals of developing commercial point A to point B travel at hypersonic speeds that well exceed that of sound. Virgin Galactic are already well known for being "the only commercial company flying faster than Mach 1," according to Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides, in a CNN Business interview, thanks to their Space Tourism enterprise. Whether the technology can be adapted is yet to be seen, as such attempts have been tried and failed in the past.
The company has its limitations with the technology they’re designing for the endeavour. They don’t plan on including outer-space travel, moon landings, or even environmentally hazardous rocket engines in their design structure. They’re still in the early phase of development in this regard, but are currently working over the designs. Thus far, their primary test vehicle is more reminiscent of a six-seated jet plane than a rocket. The idea for the Space Tourism endeavour will in this manner combine both rockets and aircrafts – both of which Virgin Galactic happens to have experience in.
The space plane itself, called SpaceShipTwo, cannot get into space on its own. It starts off strapped to a much larger ‘carrier’ ship, powered by a jet engine. This is to get it up to an appropriate height, much like a rocket engine, at which point it could detach itself and continue to journey back down to the Earth’s surface on its own, back at the point where it started. So far, two successful test flights had been done on this model. The space plane goes as far as to the edge of space, travelling at Mach 3 speeds.
Chief Astronaut Instructor and Interiors Program Manager for Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo program Beth Moses with pilots Dave Mackay and Michael “Sooch” Masucci Image: Virgin Galactic
In an article published in 2014 on the Wall Street Journal, it was written that "When you include the energy of the entire Virgin Galactic operation, which includes support aircraft, it is seven times more than the flight from Singapore to London. As such, a single trip on Virgin Galactic will require twice as much energy as the average American consumes each year. (These numbers were confirmed by a representative for Virgin Galactic)."
Such concerns about the environmental impacts of Space Tourism developing as an industry have been going around for a long while now, even as far back as 2009 when the idea for Space Tourism had begun to gain some headway.
"Space tourism is a wholly unnecessary use of resources by a very small elite of people and organizations," Claudio Magliulo of climate change action group 350 told Digital Trends. "It's an elaborate form of escapism for the 1%.”
Rocket engines are known to be far more damaging to the environment than jet engines. While Virgin Galactic’s Space Tourism venture won’t be using rocket engines for their ambitions, it cannot be denied that there will still be minimal environmental impact as a result. The Virgin Galactic website itself writes that it seeks to “transform the current cost, safety and environmental impact of space-launch.” The insinuation being that perhaps one day, the technologies developed by Space Tourism could perhaps lead to the invention of technologies that are more environmentally friendly than the ones used for current non-commercial space exploration, and eventually, commercial A to B hypersonic travel.
“Our generation has inherited an incredibly beautiful world from our parents and they from their parents. It is in our hands whether our children and their children inherit the same world. We must not be the generation responsible for irreversibly damaging the environment.” Said Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Galactic.
By Patryk Krych | © The World Daily 2020
