It’s been a busy couple of months for Virgin Galactic, Sir Richard Branson’s space tourism venture. WhiteKnightTwo — the mothership that will launch Virgin Galactic’s tourist spaceship, SpaceShipTwo — made its maiden flight from California’s Mojave Air and Space Port December 21.
On December 17, 2003, the jet-powered WhiteKnightOne lifted SpaceShipOne to 50,000 feet, where it then rocketed into suborbital space.
SpaceShipOne received the Ansari X Prize in 2004 as the first civilian low-cost spaceship to achieve suborbital flight. The 28-foot craft made its first X Prize qualifying run September 29, 2004, with test pilot Mike Melville at the controls. Days later, on October 4, 2004, Brian Binnie flew the craft into space again to win the Ansari X Prize.
Next, the ship will carry paying passengers to an altitude of 62 miles (100 kilometers), where they will experience weightlessness for 6 thrilling minutes. At $200,000 per passenger, that works out to around $33,000 per minute per ticket.
Yesterday (January 13), an exact scale model of SpaceShipOne was welcomed to the Flying Heritage Collection at Paine Field in Everett, Washington. Philanthropist Paul G. Allen (pictured below, in the middle, with Burt Rutan, the aeronautical engineer who developed SpaceShipOne, and Brian Binnie, the pilot of SpaceShipOne) founded the collection and also paid for SpaceShipOne’s successful bid for the Ansari X Prize.
Related: "SpaceShipOne up-close"
All photos courtesy of Vulcan Inc.