Page 32 - Test Flights News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Edge of space. and the way it works, spaceship 2 took off attached to a mother ship called eve at the right altitude. it detached. the pilots fired the rocket engine. it flew nearly vertical up to the edge of space. the astronauts got a few minutes of weightlessness before the plane glided back down, landing back on the same runway it took off from at space port america. so now the idea is, after two more test flights, virgin galactic will finally begin making good on its promise to send paying customers up on these suborbital space flights. if that's not enough, in just a few days, nine days,...

To spaceship2 for several, several years now, and they have not been able to deliver on these tickets to their paying customers. and so today is about richard branson getting on board spaceship 2 and showing that, hey, i believe this is going to be a safe flight and the faa just granted virgin galactic its license, approved it for commercial operations. they are planning two more test flights and then they are set to begin flying these paying customers in 2022. already, as i mentioned, they have between 600 and 700 people who have already put down deposits for these seats which cost somewhere ...

It does not look like an airplane like most people might view this vehicle and say, oh, it looks likes an airplane, it looks familiar, it looks like the shuttles did. but blue origin system is a space capsule. it's fully automated but as we know, today's pilot was piloted by two pilots. they've had many other piloted flights. they were the gliders, they were the mother ship. of course, this is still in its test phase so i want to point out that all the passengers on board were all wearing parachutes in the off chance there was an anomaly as well as supplemental oxygen on board. i told you we s...

Branson and his virgin galactic crew gearing up for tomorrow's groundbreaking launch. >> fire! >> reporter: the british billionaire set to lift off just nine days before jeff bezos takes his blue origin rocket to the edge of space. the 70-year-old daredevil will board virgin galactic's unity spaceplane for its fourth crewed test flight earlier than expected. the revved up timeline for branson sparking safety concerns. >> every single test flight we've done, the last 22, have had people on board, and no one person is any real different than the other when it comes to safety. >> reporter: in 201...

Commercialized space travel has taken off. we've seen a multitude of test flights from virgin, from elon musk's spacex, and jeff bezos' blue origin. but as the private sector waxed, nasa and government funded space travel has waned. nasa officially hung up its space shuttle program almost ten years ago to the day. >> two, one, zero, and the final lift-off of atlantis on the shoulders of the space shuttle. america will continue the dream. >> atlantis launched finally on july 8, 2011, and the agency hasn't conducted one since. we'll have more on nasa later in our coverage. while today is a day t...