Tech Magazine Kenya
  • Home
  • News
    • Kenya
    • World
  • Reviews
  • Tech Tv
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • News
    • Kenya
    • World
  • Reviews
  • Tech Tv
No Result
View All Result
Tech Magazine Kenya
No Result
View All Result
Home News

Sir Richard Branson Successfully Rockets to Outer Space Onboard Virgin SpaceShipTwo

Virgin Galactic plans to conduct just one more test flight before it will begin flying paying customers. More than 600 people have reserved tickets priced at Kshs. 20M to Kshs. 25M so far

by ATG
July 12, 2021
in News, World
6 min read
0 0
Sir Richard Branson Successfully Rockets to Outer Space Onboard Virgin SpaceShipTwo
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

You MayLike

Samsung Expects 69% Drop in Profit for 4th Quarter

ASUS Republic of Gamers Announces All-New 2023 Flow Lineup

UK-Supported Kenya Innovation Week Kicks Off

Richard Branson became the first person to ride into space aboard a rocket he helped fund. The supersonic space plane developed by his company, Virgin Galactic, roared into the sky over New Mexico early Sunday, carrying Branson and three fellow crewmembers.

Branson along with Virgin Galactic employees Beth Moses, Colin Bennett, and Sirisha Bandla and pilots Dave Mackay and Michael Masucci — boarded the SpaceShipTwo, a winged plane with a single rocket motor that the company has spent nearly two decades developing, before the crack of dawn. Attached beneath its massive, twin-fuselaged mothership, dubbed WhiteKnightTwo, the vehicle climbed to about 50,000 feet.
Just after 9:15 in the morning, the SpaceShipTwo detached from its mothership and dropped momentarily before its engine screamed to life and the vehicle swooped upward. On board, the passengers experienced up to three Gs of force from the burst of extreme acceleration and watched the blue sky fade into the star-speckled darkness of outer space.

At the top of the flight path, more than 50 miles high, the vehicle was suspended in weightlessness for a few minutes, allowing the passengers to enjoy panoramic views of the Earth and space as SpaceShipTwo flipped onto its belly. It then deployed its feathering system, which curls the plane’s wings upward, mimicking the shape of a badminton shuttlecock, to turn the spaceship rightward as it flew back into the Earth’s thick atmosphere and glided back down to a runway landing.
As Branson floated around in microgravity, he taped a message using cameras onboard the space plane: “To all you kids out there — I was once a child with a dream, looking up to the stars. Now I’m an adult in a spaceship…If we can do this, just imagine what you can do,” he said.
This flight marked only the fourth test flight of the vehicle that reached the edge of space.
Surrounding SpaceShipTwo’s takeoff was — in typical Branson fashion -— a high-production party with friends, family, employees and a few VIPs in attendance. Earlier on Sunday, Branson tweeted a picture of himself and a barefoot Elon Musk hanging out

What this means

Branson’s flight — which came just nine days before Amazon bilionaire Jeff Bezos is slated to rocket into suborbital space aboard his own company’s spacecraft — is a landmark moment for the commercial space industry. The up-and-coming sector has for years been seeking to make suborbital space tourism (a relatively simple straight-up-and-down flight, as opposed to orbiting the Earth for longer periods) a viable business with the aim of allowing thousands of people to experience the adrenaline rush and sweeping views of our home planet that such flights can offer.
Branson and Bezos are situated to become direct competitors in that industry, each offering tickets to wealthy customers for brief rides to the upper atmosphere aboard supersonic, rocket-powered spacecraft.
Virgin Galactic plans to conduct just one more test flight before it will begin flying paying customers. More than 600 people have reserved tickets priced at Kshs. 20M to Kshs. 25M so far. The company is expected to reopen ticket sales soon, though at a higher price point.
Branson’s flight also helps bolster Virgin Galactic’s reputation as the “world’s first commercial spaceline.” That’s how the company advertised itself as it signed up those hundreds of willing customers who’ve waited through development delays for their chance to ride aboard SpaceShipTwo.
But whether or not Virgin Galactic will really be the “first” commercially operational suborbital space company is not yet clear. Bezos’ space company, Blue Origin, appeared poised to put its founder in space before Branson, until Virgin Galactic made the surprise announcement earlier this month that he would be on the very next test flight, a departure from the company’s earlier plans.
Bezos’ flight, slated for July 20, could kick off the company’s commercial operations sooner than that, and one of his fellow passengers on the flight is a paying customer, having won a ticket through a charity auction for the price of Kshs. 2.8B. The company has not yet begun selling tickets to the public, however, nor has it set a specific date for when it plans to do so.
Neither company is expected to offer tickets that are affordable to the average American. Branson did tease a big “announcement” about his effort to “democratize space” ahead of the flight. But he revealed Sunday only that Virgin Galactic would be holding a “sweepstakes” for two free tickets, along with a tour of the facility from the winners from Branson himself.

How Virgin Galactic got here

Virgin Galactic moved into its facilities in New Mexico in May 2019 after years of delay. The glitzy building, called Spaceport America, was paid for with more than Kshs. 20B in mostly taxpayer money, and it had been waiting nearly a decade for Virgin Galactic to move in and open for business.
The company refurbished the building to include a lounge and other amenities that ticket holders will be able to use before their brief journey to the edge of space.
Virgin Galactic’s development program has endured a series of setbacks, including a catastrophic accident during a test flight in 2014 that left a co-pilot dead and the pilot badly injured after the SpaceShipTwo’s feathering system was prematurely deployed, ripping the spacecraft apart. The company has since parted ways with its manufacturing partner and says it has worked to enhance SpaceShipTwo with additional automated safeguards.
Branson said ahead of Sunday’s test flight that he was anxious to join the pilots and test engineers who’ve already flown on SpaceShipTwo because he felt it demonstrated a crucial vote of confidence.
“You’ve got to remember that Virgin Galactic has people on every spaceflight… The fact that I’m willing to fly with those people shows confidence,” Branson told CNN Business’ Rachel Crane earlier this month. “I think the least the founder of the company can do is go up there and fly with his people.”
Previous Post

Rimac Automobile takes over Bugatti from VW in powerhouse Merger

Next Post

Bitcoin, Energy and Africa. The possible Relationship.

Related Posts

Samsung Expects 69% Drop in Profit for 4th Quarter
News

Samsung Expects 69% Drop in Profit for 4th Quarter

January 5, 2023
ASUS Republic of Gamers Announces All-New 2023 Flow Lineup
Kenya

ASUS Republic of Gamers Announces All-New 2023 Flow Lineup

January 4, 2023
UK-Supported Kenya Innovation Week Kicks Off
Events

UK-Supported Kenya Innovation Week Kicks Off

December 6, 2022
Next Post
Bitcoin, Energy and Africa. The possible Relationship.

Bitcoin, Energy and Africa. The possible Relationship.

Editor’s Pick

Samsung Expects 69% Drop in Profit for 4th Quarter

Samsung Expects 69% Drop in Profit for 4th Quarter

January 5, 2023
ASUS Republic of Gamers Announces All-New 2023 Flow Lineup

ASUS Republic of Gamers Announces All-New 2023 Flow Lineup

January 4, 2023
UK-Supported Kenya Innovation Week Kicks Off

UK-Supported Kenya Innovation Week Kicks Off

December 6, 2022
Safaricom Launches M-PESA Go for 10- to 17-Year-olds

Safaricom Launches M-PESA Go for 10- to 17-Year-olds

November 26, 2022
ASUS 2022 Laptops Lead the Way With the Latest Intel Processors

ASUS 2022 Laptops Lead the Way With the Latest Intel Processors

November 22, 2022

Community Favourites

  • How to top up CBA loop

    How to top up CBA Loop through Mpesa

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • You Can Now Request Money From Others On Mpesa

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Samsung Expects 69% Drop in Profit for 4th Quarter

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • UK in plans to have green number plates for electric cars

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Why Elon Musk Created Neurolink

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0

Top Stories

Samsung Expects 69% Drop in Profit for 4th Quarter

Samsung Expects 69% Drop in Profit for 4th Quarter

by ATG
January 5, 2023

ASUS Republic of Gamers Announces All-New 2023 Flow Lineup

ASUS Republic of Gamers Announces All-New 2023 Flow Lineup

by ATG
January 4, 2023

UK-Supported Kenya Innovation Week Kicks Off

UK-Supported Kenya Innovation Week Kicks Off

by ATG
December 6, 2022

Kenya

Safaricom Launches M-PESA Go for 10- to 17-Year-olds

Safaricom Launches M-PESA Go for 10- to 17-Year-olds

by ATG
November 26, 2022

ASUS 2022 Laptops Lead the Way With the Latest Intel Processors

ASUS 2022 Laptops Lead the Way With the Latest Intel Processors

by ATG
November 22, 2022

BasiGo Secures 800 Million Shillings In New Funding From Leading Autotech Investors

BasiGo Secures 800 Million Shillings In New Funding From Leading Autotech Investors

by ATG
November 19, 2022

World

NASA’s Artemis 1 Rocket Launch Revives 50 Year Wait for Moon Mission

NASA’s Artemis 1 Rocket Launch Revives 50 Year Wait for Moon Mission

by ATG
November 16, 2022

Vertiv Opens Office and Customer Experience Center in Kenya

Vertiv Opens Office and Customer Experience Center in Kenya

by ATG
October 28, 2022

Roam Rolls Out The First-Ever Electric, Mass-Transit Bus Operation In Kenya

Roam Rolls Out The First-Ever Electric, Mass-Transit Bus Operation In Kenya

by ATG
October 19, 2022

  • Advertise
  • Write For Us
  • Contact Us

© 2020 | Site by Mark & Ryse

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • News
    • Kenya
    • World
  • Reviews
  • Tech Tv

© 2020 | Site by Mark & Ryse

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Create New Account!

Fill the forms bellow to register

All fields are required. Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In

Add New Playlist

This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this website you are giving consent to cookies being used.