Virgin Galactic, a spaceship owned by Richard Branson, has carried out its first commercial flight into space and charged passengers between $200,000 and $450,000 each.
The first flight into space, a trip of 50 miles from the Earth, was carried out recently after Virgin Galactic twin-fuselage “mothership” aircraft left the Spaceport America, New Mexico, at 8:30 am local time and came back by 4:45 p.m.
After gaining high altitude, the mothership released VSS Unity, a rocket-powered plane that carried six crew members on a 90-minute flight out of Earth.
The crew members are Italian Air Force Colonel, Walter Villadei and Lt. Col. Angelo Landolfi.
Listed also are the National Research Council of Italy engineer and Italian Air Force researcher, Pantaleone Carlucci, and Colin Bennett from Virgin Galactic. The 50 miles trip above Earth is dubbed the border of space by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the United States Air Force.
This is very close to the 62 miles above earth, which is the internationally knwon boundary, called Karman Line.
800 tickets have been sold by Virgin Galactic out of which 600 went for between $200,000 and $250,000 between 2005 and 2014 while an additional 200 had been sold for $450,000 since 2014.
The company will commence its tourism space travel, non-government-funded travel financed by the customers, in August.
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