Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo vehicle will carry 4 passengers on its inaugural industrial flight Thursday (June 29). But how many individuals can the suborbital space plane actually fit?
SpaceShipTwo is designed for space tourism. The 60-foot-long (18.3 meters) spacecraft can carry as much as six passengers, together with the 2 pilots who fly it. As well as, two pilots fly SpaceShipTwo’s carrier aircraft, WhiteKnightTwo, which drops the space plane at an altitude of about 50,000 feet (15,000 m). The SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo vehicles flying on Thursday are called VSS Unity and VMS Eve, respectively.
4 passengers, including Virgin Galactic’s Colin Bennett and a trio from the Italian Air Force and the nation’s National Research Council, will fly on Thursday’s mission, which Virgin Galactic calls Galactic 01. The corporate has said that a whole lot of individuals have already put down deposits for his or her spot on future suborbital flights.
Photos: Virgin Galactic’s 1st industrial spaceflight launches this week. Meet the 6-person crew of Galactic 01
The Galactic 01 mission is scheduled to take off from Spaceport America in Recent Mexico sometime after 11 a.m. EDT (1600 GMT, or 9 a.m. local time in Recent Mexico) on Thursday. A livestream of the flight will run here at Space.com, courtesy of Virgin Galactic.
After VMS Eve drops VSS Unity, the space plane will fire its onboard rocket motor to power itself to suborbital space. The Galactic 01 crewmembers will experience just a few minutes of weightlessness, and a probability to perform 13 research experiments, before heading back all the way down to Earth. They’re expected to the touch down at Spaceport America about 90 minutes after liftoff.
The four-passenger crew includes Pantaleone Carlucci, an engineer on the National Research Council of Italy; Col. Walter Villadei of the Italian Air Force, who’s training for a future mission on the International Space Station; Lt. Col. Angelo Landolfi, a physician with the Italian Air Force; and Colin Bennett, an astronaut instructor at Virgin Galactic.
Mike Masucci and Nicola Pecile will pilot VSS Unity, while Kelly Latimer will function commander of VMS Eve alongside pilot Jameel Janjua.
As much as six passengers can travel comfortably on Unity, with seats that recline to assist minimize g-forces in the course of the boost and re-entry phases of every flight. Once the vehicle has reached suborbital space, passengers can explore the cabin freely and fully and soak up awe-inspiring views from 12 large windows situated throughout the cabin.
VSS Unity is designed to hold each people and payloads to suborbital space and back. Through the Galactic 01 mission, the cabin of Unity can be transformed right into a suborbital science lab for the crew to gather data for scientific investigations geared toward studying fluid dynamics and sustainable materials for medical applications.