Virgin Spacecraft takes to the air!

The Virgin Galactic’s VSS Enterprise took off on it’s first ever flight yesterday morning from the Mojave Air and Spaceport in Mojave, Calif.

In the test run, the spacecraft remained attached to it’s mothership named the VMS Eve, however when Virgin start their commercial flight’s, the VMS Eve will cruise up to an altitude of 50,000 feet where it will then launch the VSS Enterprise using a hybrid rocket motor into space.. sounds fun?

Virgin plan to launch there space flights from Spaceport America in southern New Mexico, of which is currently undergoing work for new runways especially for the VSS Enterprise flights.

The VSS Enterprise will carry 6 fare paying passengers and 2 pilots on it’s suborbital space flights, with tickets costinga nice price of $200,000, and Virgin also announcing that they have already received 330 deposits from passengers wishing to experience space flight at $20,000 per deposit.

Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Galactic stated “Seeing the finished spaceship in December was a major day for us, but watching VSS Enterprise fly for the first time really brings home what beautiful, groundbreaking vehicles Burt and his team have developed for us”, Branson was not suprised at how well the test flight went and further stated  that “The Scaled team is uniquely qualified to bring this important and incredible dream to reality. Today was another major step along that road and a testament to U.S. engineering and innovation.”

The VSS Enterprise test flights are planned to continue though 2010 and 2011, progressing from captive carry to independent glide and then powered flight, prior to the start of there commercial flights, which they currently have planned for late 2011 or 2012.

I must admit if I had that kind of money lying around I would love to have a space experience as it would be simply amazing.

Got some spare cash? fancy a trip to space? you can book your VSS Enterprise tickets here

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