Virgin Galactic Back In The Air

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Virgin Galactic is ramping up its test-flight program in Mojave, with a goal to bring tourists to space later this year. Late last week, VSS Unity, the passenger-carrying part of Virgin’s space vehicle, completed its seventh glide flight, after a break of several months. During that downtime, Virgin’s engineers worked on testing and analysis, and made some small modifications to the vehicle, to ensure its “readiness for the higher loads and forces of powered test flight,” according to the company blog. A crew of two test pilots checked stability, control and transonic performance during the test flight, which topped out at Mach 0.9.

“At this stage of the glide flight programme, each flight is essentially a dry run for rocket-powered test flights,” according to the blog.”Where possible, the team replicates those powered flight conditions by, for example, adding water ballast to simulate the weight and positioning of the rocket motor. As during previous flights, the water ballast was jettisoned at around 22,000 feet, allowing the pilots to complete the flight and land in a lighter configuration, again simulating the conditions which will apply during space flight.” Virgin founder Richard Branson said recently that he expects Virgin Galactic to launch its first paying passengers into space by the end of this year. The tourism operations will be based at New Mexico’s spaceport.

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