Congratulations!
Update for 10:58 a.m. EDT: The carrier plane VMS Eve and the VSS Unity space plane are currently cruising up to launch altitude. Unity drop and motor ignition is expected at 11:20 a.m. EDT (1520 GMT). See how Virgin Galactic’s astronauts arrived at Spaceport America today for launch here.
Update for 10:45a.m. EDT: Virgin Galactic’s Unity 22 launch webcast has begun.
Live
https://www.space.com/virgin-galactic-richard-branson-unity-22-launch-explained?jwsource=cl
30 launching and armed for release 10
Well that was over quickly. It is a very pretty looking aircraft/spaceship though.
Will the be able to extend the length of time in future expeditions ?
A few minutes for 250,000 per seat on Virgin Galactica and Blue Origin has not officially announced yet.
Maybe one of the Dopers will go. Anyone here have any plans too book a flight?https://www.space.com/virgin-galactic-faa-operator-license-passengers
customers will experience a few minutes of weightlessness and get to see the curve of Earth against the blackness of space, for a (most recently stated) price of $250,000 per seat.
Virgin Galactic isn’t the only company offering rides to suborbital space. Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin has developed a rocket-capsule system called New Shepard, which is scheduled to make its first human spaceflight on July 20. Among the people flying on that mission are Bezos, his brother Mark and an auction winner who paid $28 million for a seat alongside them. Blue Origin has not yet identified the person who placed the winning bid. (The company has not announced its normal ticket prices, but they will certainly be far less than $28 million.)
Jeff Bezos is right now grinding his teeth, slamming his fist into the wall, and breaking things… Branson beat him into space by just a few days! 
This one is made for suborbital missions, a few minutes up/down. For actual orbiting you need significantly more equipment capabilities. Unity can go a little over 2,000mph. Orbital speed is like 17,000+ mph.
I must say I am pleased that it was Branson and not one of the new-economy “overlords” that was first to go up himself. But that’s just dating myself, I suppose. It looked like Richard was having an absolute blast. Good on the team!
(Really, insofar as actual practical spaceflight capabilities, Musk of course beat everyone without himself having to leave the ground.)
Did you know?
https://www.engadget.com/2016-02-19-virgin-galactic-unveils-the-new-spaceship-two.html
Sir Richard Branson announced the name of the ship after a video message from Hawking, and announced that Virgin Galactic’s new livery would contain an image of Hawking’s eye in the “flag” (you can see it in the image below).
See here on Bezo’s (pre flight) reaction (posted in the GA thread). Basically he’s saying “not really space” (an arguable point) and then some “my craft is better” stuff.
Brian
though there is this:
(ETA – I just saw the congrats – I didn’t see the “nuh uh” until I posted)
Brian
It’s interesting to compare this with the first American human spaceflight, the Mercury-Redstone 3 in 1961 in which Alan Shepard flew the Freedom 7 capsule in a suborbital ballistic trajectory.
That flight lasted just 15 minutes 28 seconds. But it was a really wild ride in terms of G forces (and noise!). The Virgin Galactic flight was peaceful in comparison. Freedom 7 achieved a maximum altitude of 116.5 miles and maximum speed of 5,134 MPH, which greatly exceeded today’s numbers, but the short flight duration meant that the flight experience could only be described as “violent”. Shepard was subjected to 6.3g during liftoff. During re-entry, he experienced a max of an astounding 11.6g. I tend to think of today’s flight as a “flight”, something with market potential for the wealthy, whereas Shepard’s experience sounds like something more like being shot out of a cannon!
Would love to but I don’t have a spare $250k lying around for that sort of joyriding. "Go to space " is the last item on my bucket list, though, so if the price was in reach for me I’d go.
(“In reach” being more like $25k a seat, although that would still take a bit for me to pull together. Guess I’ll have to wait another decade or five for either the price to come down or my wealth to go up.)
Literally a “ballistic” flight, the Mercury basically stood in for the nuke that would normally be on top of the missile and took the Gs that would take.
Bezos’ launch is named after Shepard because it resembles more that flight profile (rocket up, trajectory to peak above 100 miles, well past the 62-mile “Kárman height” used by international record-awarders). Branson’s is more akin to those of the X-15 rocketplanes, whose pilots did get Astronaut wings if they exceeded 50 miles altitude.
I hope Branson can finally settle for us if the world is round or flat. Hope he got pics.
The shot of the crew in their “super hero team” uniforms really looks like it should be captioned “The last picture of us before the cosmic accident in space gave us all strange powers.”
Bezos’s temper tantrum over this just gives me the warm fuzzies. While I would like to see Blue Origin actually compete with SpaceX in the “new space” field they so far have only an unblemished record of not putting anything into orbit. IIRC correctly after the first time SpaceX stuck a first stage landing, Bezos tweeted out “Welcome to the club” as if their New Shepard test flights had somehow already achieved what SpaceX had accomplished by landing an orbital-class rocket. Branson’s joyride is a hell of a lot closer to the same thing as New Shepard than New Shepard is to a Falcon 9.
I was surprised to see the passengers turning somersaults and having a great time instead of puking their guts out.
They probably had plenty of time training in a vomit comet first. I know I’d want that training before going up in a rocket.
On Facebook, every time this is mentioned,it is attacked, derided.
Why does it bother people so that rich dudes spend their money to go into space?
We used to celebrate space travel.
I love the space program. But I’m also one of the people that does that, and I’ll tell you why.
Space travel used to be conducted for the benefit of humankind. Now we’ve got billionaires who pay almost no tax, getting their kicks by trying to beat each other into space, while they could be doing a lot more good with their money by doing things like securing clean water for Flint, or ending homelessness, or something. Hell, they’re not even staying in space long enough to conduct any experiments! It’s just a bunch of rich people having dick-measuring contests with one another.
Mods, I’m not trying to threadshit; I’m really not. I’m just answering the previous poster’s question, quite honestly.
I agree with ekedolphin, but less than enthusiastically. A $250,000 doesn’t cut much into the philanthropy they could do. Now tickets costing millions, that kind of money could be helpful financing soup kitchens or something. We need to find a tax dodge for these guys. If you could deduct bread and soup giving away from your income tax, we might have something. 
I must admit to being somewhat jealous of folks who have that much money, but I’m not aware of it unless they are on the news in their very own spaceship.
It is great than wealthy people are building space craft. I believe Space-x is a lot more useful.
