![Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity is seen at Spaceport America in front of the company's iconic headquarters.](https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/GettyImages-1233923032-800x534.jpg)
SPACEPORT AMERICA, Latest Mexico—I’m standing on a spaceport runway on the ass end of nowhere. The sun has began to creep over the craggy San Andreas Mountains, illuminating the large, alien spaceship-like constructing here in Latest Mexico that Virgin Galactic calls home.
I even have traveled all this fashion in early August to seek out a bit of illumination of my very own. Specifically, I need to know just what the heck Virgin Galactic is as much as. Founded by Sir Richard Branson some 19 years ago, the corporate has had a wild ride in its quest to develop into the world’s first bona fide space tourism business. Along the way in which, Virgin Galactic’s stock soared as high as $56 a share, then crashed to now barely above $3. Certainly one of its spaceships crashed, too, nearly nine years ago, killing a test pilot. But now it’s moving forward in a positive direction.
Afterward Thursday morning, with a shocking rocket blast initiated about 14 km above the Latest Mexico desert, the corporate accomplished its seventh flight to an altitude of 88 km, above the overwhelming majority of Earth’s atmosphere. A lot of the previous missions were test flights to push the envelope of the spacecraft’s capabilities. Thursday’s flight, dubbed Galactic 02, was actually the primary time the corporate flew a non-public astronaut into space—and that is the explanation Virgin Galactic exists, in any case.
Greater than 1,000 people have bought tickets for the Virgin Galactic experience, which incorporates a couple of minutes of weightlessness after a one-minute rocket ride to the highest of the world. The primary several hundred paid $250,000 for his or her tickets greater than 15 years ago, with the expectation of starting flights around 2010. Certainly one of them was on board the space plane Thursday.
This was Jon Goodwin, a British businessman who recently turned 80 years old. Goodwin purchased his ticket all the way in which back in 2005. He was just the fourth person to accomplish that. But he has Parkinson’s’ disease and is running out of time. He knows it.
“The indisputable fact that I’m now in a position to do that is totally magical,” he said. “Defying Parkinson’s is hopefully inspirational.”
He was joined on the flight by Keisha Schahaff and Anastatia Mayers, a Caribbean mother-daughter duo whose tickets were purchased by the nonprofit Space for Humanity so as to broaden access to space. So with this single mission, Virgin Galactic really did, in the end, start to satisfy its goals of broadening access to space.
It was a moment. But will it’s a fleeting moment? What does Thursday’s successful flight actually mean? Does Virgin Galactic have a successful future? I got here to Latest Mexico to seek out out.