Richard Branson’s space flight

[Morrus]

It’s all the rage with billionaires right now! Bezos is doing it in a couple of weeks. No word on Musk yet (he did send his car into space though). Branson is doing it this afternoon.

Sir Richard Branson takes off on 'extraordinary' space flight

The UK businessman is set to realise a lifetime's ambition by flying to the edge of space.

www.bbc.co.uk

Of course these are just short sub orbital flights, but even so. Pretty ship though!

 

[TwiceBorn2]

Pretty ship though!

Definitely nicer than the phallus-shaped rocket Bezos is scheduled to fly in. But he'll be going 20km deeper into space!

 

[Umbran]

Rich man does a thing carried along by people he's paid to do all the hard work. Film at 11.

 

[Marc_C]

Waiting for rates to go way down to reserve tickets.

 

[Morrus]

I'm watching it live. Helps pass the time until the football tonight!

 

[R_J_K75]

There's a few billion dollar joyride.

 

[John R Davis]

I'm watching it live. Helps pass the time until the football tonight!

Was amazing.
Game is in the bag due to manifest destiny. I was born on day of Englands first game '66 world cup, wives birthday was on the day England won it and my 55th birthday today!

 

[Eltab]

Can I stow away in his luggage?

 

[Benjamin Olson]

Well I'm happy for his team that they got to launch their billionaire into space before any of the other teams launched billionaires into space. They've been at it the longest, have had the roughest time of it, and have had to make do on merely huge amounts of money rather than bottomless reserves of money. They deserved a win. Congrats to their payload (Branson) as well, I suppose.

This is probably the high point for their whole endeavor. I think their model of spacetravel (rocketplane launched off mothership plane) represents an evolutionary dead-end in commercial space travel and will ultimately end up a quirky sideshow in the commercial space race, so there probably isn't a great future for Virgin Galactic (even if it has the most ambitious name of the space companies) beyond just selling an x-treme suborbital experience to rich people who don't have the time and/or order of magnitude larger money to spend on a full-fledged space experience. It's good that they at least one the "put a billionaire in space" race, even if only by a hair.

 

[Deset Gled]

I think their model of spacetravel (rocketplane launched off mothership plane) represents an evolutionary dead-end in commercial space travel and will ultimately end up a quirky sideshow in the commercial space race, so there probably isn't a great future for Virgin Galactic (even if it has the most ambitious name of the space companies) beyond just selling an x-treme suborbital experience to rich people who don't have the time and/or order of magnitude larger money to spend on a full-fledged space experience.

Could you explain this opinion further? I was under the impression that there were a number of benefits to this type of launch (the US has used it for experimental designs before, and I believe it was one consideration for the shuttle). Also, why is the entire program dependent on that one aspect of the design?