As the average Trekkie counts down to next year's big-screen prequel, hardcore space fanatics are waiting patiently for the year 2010, when Virgin Galactic hopes to start sending the VSS Enterprise, and six paying customers at a time, into the cosmos.
For $200,000 apiece, civilian astronauts will receive: three days of training, a ride aboard a mother ship to 50,000 feet and subsequent 2,500 mph hurtle through the edges of the atmosphere, five minutes of weightlessness and earth-ogling, and a g-force-intensive, supine landing. (If nothing else, it'll be a novel alternative to the 'full and upright position.') Total flight time? About two and a half hours.
Specific launch dates are not yet set. 'We're about three quarters of the way through the construction of the spaceship system, and plan to unveil it in the first half of 2009,' says Virgin Galactic president Will Whitehorn. The second half of 2009 will be dedicated to test flights, if all goes well, commercial flights will begin the following year.
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Source - MSNBC
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