Space travel flights from Virgin Galactic will take place from Europe
Virgin Galactic makes tremendous progress in creating technologies that will make a beautiful vision of a cosmic tourist come true. The company intends to prosper on the European market.
Over the last months, Richard Branson's company has been extensively testing the rocket engine in its VSS Unity spacecraft. Two months ago, the last test took place, during which the engine worked for 30 seconds, and the ship rose to a height of about 38 kilometers and crossed the sound barrier, reaching Mach 1.9 (2329 km / h)
After a successful test, VSS Unity started lowering himself altogether and landed on the airfield in the Mojave desert in California. The authorities of Virgin Galactic stated that although the engine fired quite hard and the whole ship was vibrating, further modifications should eliminate this problem.
The planned next experiment is getting us closer and closer to the first test manned flights. They are to take place in the following months.
Meanwhile, news comes to us about predicting the place from which suborbital flights will take place. It will be Taranto-Grottaglie airport located in the southern part of Italy.
Virgin Galactic and Virgin Orbit have already signed agreements with Italian companies Altec and Sitael, which will prepare at the airport a special infrastructure for carrying out safe flights to the outer space.
"The possibility of launching orbital starts from Puglia is a good opportunity for Sitael as well as for the entire European and Italian space industry," said Vito Pertosa, founder of Sitael.
The billionaire and founder companies of the Virgin group will also carry out the launches of their LauncherOne system in Italy. It is a special rocket, on board of which space installations will be located. The rocket is to be attached to the Boeing 747 aircraft called the Cosmic Girl and launched at a certain altitude. From there, it will go into space and release a valuable cargo.
Richard Branson wants to offer space tourism next year. Recall that the tickets for the first spacecraft VSS Unity from Virgin Galactic were sold literally on the trunk. So, if you are interested in this form of suborbital entertainment, now you can buy a flight ticket that will take place no sooner than after 2021.