Branson Unveils SpaceShipTwo: “2008 is the Year of the Spaceship”

Branson announced a new era of space travel as he unveiled SpaceShipTwo, a suborbital spaceplane developed by The Spaceship Company, which is a joint venture between Scaled Composites and Virgin Group. The Virgin Galactic spaceline plans to operate a fleet of five of these craft in passenger-carrying private spaceflight service as early as late next year.

SpaceShipTwo and its new carrier aircraft, White Knight Two, will be roughly three times the size of the first generation spacecraft SpaceShipOne and mothership White Knight that won the Ansari X Prize. SpaceShipTwo has large porthole windows so passengers' can enjoy the extraterrestrial view. Seats recline back during landing to help decrease the possible discomforts of G-forces. Reportedly, the craft will be highly safe, and can land even if "catastrophic damage" occurs during the voyage.

At the unveiling with space engineer Burt Rutan, Branson welcomed everyone to the historic occasion and joked, “Burt has been very reluctant to let anyone in to his factory, especially me, so having seen the footage I am enormously relieved that he has indeed been hard at work building our spaceships for the past two years.”

Speaking about the transformative Overview Effect reported by dozens of space travelers, Branson spoke about his belief that space travel will increase our awareness and sense of Earth’s preciousness.

"If our new system could carry only people into space, that would be enough for me, because of the transforming effect it will have on the thousands who will travel with us. It is quite clear from every astronaut that I’ve ever spoken to — including Brian Binnie and Mike Melvill — that seeing the planet from out there, surrounded by the incredibly thin protective layer of atmosphere, helps one to wake up to the fragility of the small portion of the planet’s mass that we inhabit, and to the importance of protecting the Earth.”

In spite of criticism that space travel can’t solve pressing Earth-bound issues, or that space travel will actually make things worse, Branson says he believes Space travel is of the utmost importance. Shortly before unveiling the new technology, Branson shared why he believes the final frontier of space to be so essential to the future of Earth’s civilization.

“It was Stephen Hawking who first got me thinking about this issue, when he explained clearly and concisely to the BBC that mankind had no option but to get to space as quickly as possible and start doing things up there that we have been doing on planet Earth, but in a much more efficient manner.

“Our population is now heading to 9 billion people by the middle of this century — that’s three times more than when I was born. With the end of the oil era approaching, and climate change progressing faster than most models have been predicting, the utilization of space is essential not only for communications but also for the logistics of survival through things such as weather satellites, agricultural monitoring, GPS and climate science.

“I also believe that someday we will be able to use space as a source of energy for the planet, through solar power satellites, using the most sustainable source available – our Sun.”

Looking even farther into the future, SpaceShipTwo’s designer, Rutan, has previously acknowledged his firm belief that the work he is involved with today will someday help get people off of this planet permanently, which will help ensure that life continues regardless of the future of Earth.

“In my lifetime I want to see affordable trips to the moon — maybe not landing on the moon, but certainly swinging by it in that wonderful, big elliptical orbit. It will be a lot more fun than orbiting the Earth, because it doesn't have an atmosphere and the perigee can be as low as you want. I think in 500 years, most of the people that go to the solar system's other planets won't come back to the Earth. They'll stay there and raise their families.”

Posted by Rebecca Sato.

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