Back into Space: Branson’s Virgin Galactic Debuts Revamped Craft

VSS United is designed to take a crew of two pilots and up to six passengers to space.

Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic is back in the space tourism business with the unveiling of a new SpaceShipTwo, called the VSS Unity. The company had delayed its initial launch of a similar space vehicle after VSS Enterprise, an experimental spaceflight test vehicle, suffered a catastrophic in-flight break-up and crashed in the Mojave Desert in California on Oct. 31, 2014. 

That crash killed the pilot and severely injured the co-pilot, and set back Virgin Galactic’s plan to launch guests into space. The company originally had forecast it would offer space tourism as early as this year.  

Virgin Galactic is a privately funded space company owned by Virgin Group and Abu Dhabi’s Aabar Investments PJS. Sir Richard Branson and his family, as well as future astronauts and partners, attended the rollout ceremony of the new space vehicle on Feb. 19. Professor Stephen Hawking named the new vehicle Virgin Spaceship (VSS) Unity in a recorded speech. 

Virgin Galactic space tourism trips cost up to $250,000 each and are being sold by nearly 60 accredited space agents—travel agents who get a commission of 10% or more on the sale. Roughly 600 people have signed up for these space flights already, and reportedly few cancelled after the crash of the test flight.  

The ceremony featured four generations of Sir Richard’s family, including his mother Eve, Branson himself, his son Sam, and his grandchild Eva Deia. The ceremony also included a video congratulations from Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, who emphasized the importance of space to science and technical education. 

The new SpaceShipTwo is the first vehicle to be manufactured by the Spaceship Company, Virgin Galactic’s wholly owned manufacturing arm, and is the second vehicle of its design ever constructed. VSS Unity was unveiled at FAITH (Final Assembly Integration Test Hangar), the Mojave-based home of manufacturing and testing for Virgin Galactic’s human space flight program. 

The new vehicle has been in development since 2012, with each component part undergoing rigorous testing before assembly. With the unveiling of VSS Unity, the Spaceship Company will begin ground and flight tests in the Mojave, and ground and air exercises at its future home in Spaceport America, New Mexico. 

SpaceShipTwo is designed to take a crew of two pilots and up to six passengers to space. Virgin Galactic’s space flight experience features an air launch followed by a rocket-powered ascent at three and a half times the speed of sound, several minutes of out-of-seat weightlessness, and multiple windowed views of Earth. 

Virgin Galactic’s commercial spaceline fleet now consists of VSS Unity and two dedicated carrier aircraft—the WhiteKnightTwo VMS Eve for human spaceflight and the 747-400 Cosmic Girl for the LauncherOne small satellite launch service. 

“Together, we can make space accessible in a way that has only been dreamt of before now, and by doing so can bring positive change to life on Earth,” Branson said. “Our beautiful new spaceship, VSS Unity, is the embodiment of that goal and will provide us with an unprecedented body of experience which will in turn lay the foundations for Virgin Galactic’s future.”