Over 4 years after an initial sub-orbital test flight, Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic is finally ready to begin commercial operations with the launch of a six-man crew.
, owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, already offers commercial sub-orbital flights aboard its New Shepard spacecraft and Virgin plans a steady stream of similar flights following Thursday's mission.
The flight plan for Thursday's launch calls for the Eve carrier jet to lift VSS Unity to an altitude of around 45,000 feet. Seconds after release from Eve's wing, the spacecraft's hybrid rocket engine will ignite, propelling the ship up and out of the dense lower atmosphere. Villadei is serving as commander of the"Virtute 1" mission aboard the spaceplane. He is in training to visit the International Space Station as part of a commercial crew to be launched by SpaceX for Houston-based Axiom Space.
After the ship's rocket engine cuts off, the crew will be weightless for three to four minutes as the ship climbs to a maximum altitude of just over 50 miles, the somewhat arbitrary threshold of space where aerodynamic forces no longer have any discernible effect.
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