Far, far away from Washington politics and the bewildered NASA workforce wondering about life under ObamaSpace, a small spaceship carrying the hopes of generation weaned on Star Trek took to the skies on Monday for the first time in a test flight over California's Mojave Desert.
Dubbed Enterprise (naturally), the sleek, six-passenger ship was built for Virgin Galactic, a space tourism outfit owned and operated by Richard Branson's Virgin Group. The company has reservations and deposits from more 330 aspiring amateur astronauts who are paying $200,000 each for a suborbital ride.
BIG PIC: The December unveiling of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo.
Mojave-based Scaled Composites, now a wholly owned subsidiary of Northrop Grumman, designed and built Enterprise, which is closely modeled on a prototype vehicle known as SpaceShipOne. That ship clinched a $10 million prize and a spot in the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum after becoming the first privately developed spacecraft to carry people beyond Earth's atmosphere. SpaceShipOne made three flights in 2004, raising hopes that ordinary, albeit very wealthy, people could one day experience spaceflight for themselves.
Burt Rutan, the legendary aircraft designer and Scaled Composites founder who oversaw development of both SpaceShipOne and Enterprise, said Monday’s test flight "signals the start of what we believe will be an extremely exciting and successful spaceship flight test program."
"This is a momentous day," he said in a statement.
"Watching VSS Enterprise fly for the first time really brings home what beautiful, ground-breaking vehicles Burt and his team have developed for us," Branson added.
The spaceship, which was unveiled in December, is scheduled for an extensive series of test flights through 2011. Commercial operations are targeted to begin in 2012.
Image: VSS Enterprise beneath its mother ship, Eve. Credit: Mark Greenberg/Virgin Galactic.
Tags: Private Spaceflight, Space Commercialization, Space People
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