British billionaire Richard Branson has space travel plans in the next 5 to 6 months aboard his very own Virgin Galactic spaceship.
This is what the Virgin head had to say at a museum event in Washington, “My wish is to go up on the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, that’s what we’re working on”.
The Apollo 11 mission landed on the moon on the July 20th 1969, it’s the fiftieth anniversary this this year.
Richard Branson’s company is one of the very few companies that is working to send passengers to space. They have plans to send hundreds of people on short suborbital flights around the earth, meaning they would not get enough time to orbit the entire earth. The journey would barley be for a few minutes.
This mission is shorter and more affordable than SpaceX’s project to send Japanese billionaire to the moon by 2023.
Virgin Galactic’s spaceship called SpaceShipTwo that’s commanded by two pilots recently flew to the edge of the space, that is 80 kilometers above earth.
The Spaceship to is dropped by a carrier plane like a bomb, then it starts off it’s very own engine to climb up to the curvature of the earth. The aircraft then descends gradually at the original departure point in California.
It can carry six passengers and two pilot commanding the SpaceShipTwo.
Branson invests US$ 35 million a month to keep Virgin Galactic aflot, and since 2000 he burned more than a billion dollars.
SpaceShipTwo’s next flight would be on the 20th of February if clear skies permit.