At nine on Sunday morning in New Mexico, that is to say at 17 Italian, the flight of the space plane of Virgin Galactic will begin, the space company of the British billionaire Richard Branson who will be aboard the aircraft for the first time. The flight of the VSS Unity – as the space plane is called – with Branson on board will exceed 80 kilometers of altitude, a threshold beyond which, according to some international organizations, Space begins (we return) and anticipates a similar flight of the Blue space company by a few days. Origin, scheduled for July 20, which will host billionaire and founder Jeff Bezos.
Branson, in short, will go to space before Bezos, and even if that of Virgin Galactic is still officially an experimental flight, with a crew composed exclusively of company employees, for many it will be a fundamental moment in the field of space travel for the private citizens.
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The goal of both Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin is to shortly begin inaugurating suborbital flights for private and wealthy passengers who intend to pay large sums to experience weightlessness for a few minutes during a space travel. The two companies, both led by famous and exuberant billionaires, however, have adopted two very different ways to get into space.
The flight of the VSS Unity spacecraft will depart from Virgin Galactic’s Spaceport America, located in New Mexico, United States. It will also be a remarkable event from a media point of view: it will be streamed and presented by Stephen Colbert, the famous American comedian and TV presenter. Singer Khalid is expected to give a performance, and billionaire Elon Musk, founder of the space company SpaceX, he hinted that he might be present.
The VSS Unity spacecraft resembles a jet: it is 18 meters long, and in the initial part of its flight it will be carried by a larger plane, which will take it to 50 thousand feet of altitude (15.2 kilometers). At that point, the Unity VSS will fire up its thrusters and ascend vertically at a speed of Mach 3. The crew on board will feel approximately 3.5 times more force than their body weight. Once the maximum altitude is reached, which should be just over 80 kilometers from Earth, passengers will be able to get up from their seats and experience an apparent absence of gravity.
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In reality it is not really a question of weightlessness: at that distance from Earth, the gravitational force does not change much, but after reaching 80 kilometers of altitude the VSS Unity will begin to fall, and passengers, falling at the same speed as the aircraft , it will seem to float. After a brief fall, the VSS Unity will shift its ailerons to stabilize the vehicle and make the reentry easier, which will still be very intense, because passengers will feel six times the force of gravity. Finally, the Unity VSS will land like a normal airplane. The flight should take a couple of hours in total.
Il VSS Unity (Virgin Galactic via AP, File)
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For Richard Branson, 70-year-old billionaire founder of several Virgin-branded airlines, the flight of the VSS Unity is an expected result for more than 15 years. He founded Virgin Galactic in 2004, and promised that the first trips for space tourists would begin in two or three years. In fact Virgin Galactic had huge – and in some cases catastrophic – problems and slowdowns, and it took 17 years to get to the first fully manned flight.
Branson will be accompanied by three experienced Virgin Galactic employees: Beth Moses (the chief astronaut trainers), Colin Bennett (the chief engineer) and Sirisha Bandla, a space engineer who heads the government relations office. and that she will be the second woman of Indian descent to go into space.
From dream to reality, this is the story of @VirginGalactic. The next chapter begins tomorrow. Watch the #Unity22 launch live at 6 am PT | 9 am ET | 2 pm BST on https://t.co/PcvGTmA661 pic.twitter.com/ETa6KXRW5F
— Richard Branson (@richardbranson) July 10, 2021
Another notable element of Virgin Galactic’s flight is that it anticipates Blue Origin’s by just a few days. When it comes to Space, Branson and Jeff Bezos have a certain rivalry, and Blue Origin didn’t take very well the fact that Virgin Galactic’s flight risks overshadowing their own.
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For several days, the Blue Origin Twitter account has been publishing critical allusions against Virgin Galactic, mainly focused on the fact that, while the VSS Unity will arrive just above 80 kilometers in altitude, the New Shepard, that is Blue Origin’s spacecraft, will exceed 100 kilometres.
Here a debate of conventions opens, because while the United States Federal Aviation Administration considers that Space begins above 80 kilometers of altitude (i.e. 50 miles, beyond the imaginary line called the Armstrong line) , many space agencies believe that Space begins after 100 kilometers, the so-called Kármán line. According to Blue Origin, therefore, the VSS Unity will not really go into space.
From the beginning, New Shepard was designed to fly above the Kármán line so none of our astronauts have an asterisk next to their name. For 96% of the world’s population, space begins 100 km up at the internationally recognized Kármán line. pic.twitter.com/QRoufBIrUJ
— Blue Origin (@blueorigin) July 9, 2021
The New Shepard consists of a rocket (much more similar to the conventional image of a space rocket than the VSS Unity) topped by a capsule that will hold passengers: after take-off, in about four minutes the rocket will exceed 100 kilometers. of altitude, allowing passengers to experience weightlessness. At that point it will detach from the capsule and land on its own, while the capsule will reach the ground with some parachutes. In all, the journey should take 10 minutes, including 3 minutes in weightless conditions. Bezos will go into space with his brother Mark, 82-year-old aviation pioneer Wally Funk and one person who paid $ 28 million to do it.
In the end, despite the disagreements of the previous days, Blue Origin still wished the rival company on Saturday.
Wishing you a great flight tomorrow @virgingalactic! https://t.co/E1JCzEEQbK
— Blue Origin (@blueorigin) July 10, 2021
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