About SpaceShipTwo, Richard Branson’s Space Tour Flight

Jakarta, CNN Indonesia —

Spaceship, SpaceShipTwo was used by the founder of the company Virgin Galactic Richard Branson for a tour of space. This aircraft, reportedly released for tourist flights today, Sunday (11/7).

SpaceShipTwo is intentionally designed to take travelers into sub-orbital space. The planes are manufactured by Virgin Galactic’s sister company, The Spaceship Company.

In 2004, Branson predicted that commercial flights would start in 2007, but for various reasons the plan was delayed. Now the plane is expected to be open to the public in 2022.

In July 2008, Virgin Galactic held a massive launch event to showcase the WhiteKnightTwo, a two-body carrier with four jet engines that would take SpaceShipTwo into space.

The first WhiteKnightTwo, Eve, completed her successful maiden test flight before the end of 2008.

Six years later, on October 31, 2014, the vehicle broke apart during its fourth powered test flight, killing co-pilot Michael Alsbury and injuring pilot Peter Siebold.

A crash investigation led by the National Transportation Safety Board showed that the propeller re-entry system was used too early during flight, and the system design was changed in SpaceShipTwo’s next prototype, VSS Unity.

May 2018, Virgin Galactic sent its VSS Unity spacecraft into space for a supersonic rocket test flight. The test puts the company one step closer to reaching the frontier of space.

“It’s great to see our beautiful spaceship return to the air and share moments with the talented team that took us, step by step, into space,” Branson said in a post-flight recap, citing Greek Wire, May 28, 2018.

“Seeing Unity soar to the top at supersonic speeds was inspiring and truly amazing. We’re getting closer and closer to realizing our goal.” he added.

So far, the plane’s most important milestone was flying beyond the United States Air Force’s space definition limit of 82.7 kilometers, in December 2018. SpaceShipTwo repeated the feat on February 22, 2019.

The technology behind the creation of SpaceShipTwo stems from the X prize competition with a prize of $10 million or around Rp.144 billion. The plane was deliberately made to spur the development of private space flight.

After its predecessor spacecraft, SpaceShipOne, won the award in 2004, the two companies that created it: Scaled Composites and Virgin Galactic merged to form The Spaceship Company.

The goal of this new company is to commercialize space flight technology.