Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo Launches Second Successful Flight
MOJAVE (CNET) — Richard Branson is really picking up his space tourism game after a rocky start.
The Virgin founder's rocket-powered passenger spacecraft, SpaceShipTwo, zoomed closer to taking tourists to the edge of space Tuesday when it successfully completed a second test flight.
Called the VSS Unity, the second craft built for the journeys after the unsuccessful Enterprise, soared up to 114,500 feet at Mach 1.9, or nearly 1,300 miles per hour (2,090 kph).
VSS Unity has been busy, this being her second flight in two months, with the initial test flight successfully launching in April. This is all happening around four years after the fatal crash of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo, Enterprise.
Since its founding in 2004, Virgin Galactic has hoped to offer you flights to space for a cheeky $250,000 a ticket. Problem is, it's almost a decade behind schedule, and competition is heated in the space tourism arena, with Jeff Bezos' rocket company Blue Origin and Elon Musk's SpaceX charging to infinity and beyond.
