VirginGalactic's New Toys

[Tuckerfan]

Gettin’ closer.

Virgin Galactic has released the final design of the launch system that will take fare-paying passengers into space.

It is based on the X-Prize-winning SpaceShipOne concept - a rocket ship that is lifted initially by a carrier plane before blasting skywards.

The Virgin system is essentially a refinement, but has been increased in size to take eight people at a time on a sub-orbital trip, starting in 2010.

Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson said the space business had huge potential.

“I think it’s very important that we make a genuine commercial success of this project,” he told a news conference in New York.

Damn skippy.

[Pushkin]

And they can do all that for only $200 000 a ticket, that really is a bargain, regardless of how seemingly short the trip up and down is.

Best of all you can travel on a space ship called “Enterprise” On the downside this’ll really mess up the opening montage for Star Trek Enterprise

[dogbutler]

@Pushkin

And they can do all that for only $200 000 a ticket, that really is a bargain, regardless of how seemingly short the trip up and down is.

Best of all you can travel on a space ship called “Enterprise” On the downside this’ll really mess up the opening montage for Star Trek Enterprise

They can just pull a George Lucas, and change things around.

[Mangetout]

@Pushkin

Best of all you can travel on a space ship called “Enterprise” On the downside this’ll really mess up the opening montage for Star Trek Enterprise

They’re not going to call it ‘Enterprise’, are they? That’s nearly as corny as ‘Virgin Galactic’.

[Pushkin]

@Mangetout

They’re not going to call it ‘Enterprise’, are they?

You’d better believe it

Slightly more appropriate perhaps is a sister ship, Spirit of Steve Fossett, the Virgin Galactic brand dodging the bullet of having a space ship called “Voyager”

[Terrifel]

@Pushkin

You’d better believe it

Slightly more appropriate perhaps is a sister ship, Spirit of Steve Fossett, the Virgin Galactic brand dodging the bullet of having a space ship called “Voyager”

In the 23rd Century…

“This unit has been programmed by Sp’Sett to observe and record normal functioning of the carbon-units infesting USS Enterprise…”

[Pushkin]

NASA’s already made that mistake, fortunately the probe was limited to the Earth’s surface.