Virgin Galactic will formally unveil its new SpaceShipTwo spacecraft on Monday afternoon, December 7, 2009, at the Mojave Spaceport in California, as one of the important steps toward eventually providing suborbital space flights for paying customers.
In New Mexico, the world’s first facility, which will be used exclusively to send paying customers into space, has broken ground in the remote desert. While the project is expensive, the costs of each space trip are still quite pricey, too!
Spaceport America, in New Mexico, has been granted a license for vertical and horizontal launches from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The facility will initially provide suborbital space flights for paying customers and other payloads.
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), the first mission for NASA’s Vision for Space Exploration, will be delayed from December 2008 to February 2009 after its launch date is switched with an Air Force reusable unmanned experimental spaceplane.
Beginning in 2010, the California-based company expects to transport paying customers into a 38-mile suborbital flight to experience weightlessness and “to see the stars above and the Earth and its atmosphere below.”
On Wednesday, January 23, 2008, Burt Ratan and Sir Richard Branson displayed for the first time the design of their new suborbital spaceplane, SpaceShipTwo, at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan, New York, U.S.A., Earth.