Page 33 - Weightlessness News Today

Help usher in a new era of space tourism where regular folks like myself and you guys could one day travel to space and enjoy the beauty of weightlessness. i dont know about you, but i would love to get up there, but virgin galactic says they have two more test flights before they start their commercial operations expected for early 2022. thats when they hope to flying some 600 passengers that have paid around $200,000 a ticket to ride on this vehicle, and thats a price that they expect to go up...

Released release. clean release. >> and with that, the space race rocketed forward. british billionaire richard branson sort along the edge of space and touchdown safely. he and the crew of the unity 22 took off after a 90 minute weather delay. they experience about four minutes of weightlessness and an altitude of lower than 50 miles before their dissent. sir richard branson spoke about his experience after returning to earth. >> like most kids, i have drums of this moment since i was a kid. ob...

Level. they got a few minutes of weightlessness. and then it glided back down to earth and landed on the same runway it took off from. while it looked flawless, and so easy, this was the culmination of 17 years of incredibly difficult and at times tragic work for the entire team. its something that richard branson alluded to on this stage behind me at the big celebration ceremony. >> i want to say thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, to every single person who has believed in virgin galac...

Day howard hughes, and has sometimes pulled the wrong cord, but he has currently ridden on this sort of rolled this out on a ride that is $300,000 each, and this is a publicity action and he has succeeded in getting out the word of virgin galactic and opening up a new era of tourism, geoff. >> any scientific value or just about tourism dollars eventually? >> well, geoff, thank you for having me, and i dont think that i have to say that any space ride is normal, and every one is extraordinary. bu...

Happen? what are we going to see? >> reporter: well, fareed, we just had a really exciting moment happen just a few short moments ago. we saw richard branson and his specialists come out of the hangar, get in their vehicles and head out to the runway where vss unity, their spaceship, their mother eve are parked and ready to take off in about 30 minutes. this lift-off, the mother ship eve will take vss unity to about 40,000 feet. thats when the spaceship will release and the rocket engine will ig...

Children will be growing up if a world where space travel is normal, where their next-door neighbor may have gone up to space and have their astronaut wings. this is really the dawn of a new era of space exploration and space travel. thats what so many of us have waited for, that final frontier to be open for the rest of us, so blue origin, virgin galactic and others are working so diligently to open the heavens for us. as we know, right now it costs a pretty penny to get there, but those that a...

Financed by private companies that could have a great future. >> yeah. and judging by the looks of it, the atmosphere that someone like richard branson brings along with something like this is pure excitement. you know, you can probably hear the music behind me and thats what its sort of been this entire time weve been out here since the early morning hours, around 4:00 a.m. a. theyve been pumping music out here, getting people excited about this, not just for richard branson but whats next for ...

Passengers up to mock 3, three times the speed of sound. we could even hear the sonic booms here. well have to wait and see. theyll have a few minutes climbing up to space where they will experience a few minutes of weightlessness. theyll be traveling about 50 miles above earth. that is the u.s. boundary for space, so it will just be touching the edge of space before touching back down to earth making a glide touchdown, and thats when we expect the crowds to go wild here at spaceport america, so...

Tawny. damon, describe the moments theyre feeling right now. >> its locked in my head. its just fantastic. in my case in the shuttle, we were strapped in pretty hard, so when youre strapped in, youre not flown out of your seat but you feel things. you hold up your pencil and your book, let go and it floats there. visually, it was an amazing thing, but getting out and floating, just a fantastic sensation. >> now its speeding autopsy the 17,000 miles an hour. theyre now heading quickly back to ear...

And it was an hour long journey and a few minutes of weightlessness as well. but the journey to get here was decades in the making. not only did branson make it happen, but he brought all of us along with him. >> experience of a lifetime. and congratulations to everybody for creating such a beautiful, beautiful place. congratulations to all our wonderful team at virgin galactic. 17 years of hard work to get us this far. >> make being him the first billionaire to travel into sub space. his goal t...