May 15, 2014

Image Caption: Close up of SS2 during a successful rocket-powered flight. Credit: Virgin Galactic

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports Your Universe Online

As Virgin Galactic sent its WhiteKnightTwo carrier plane out for a test drive on Tuesday, the company found itself the subject of reports claiming that its commercial space flight operation would be delayed, as well as speculation that its passengers might not technically be traveling into space after all.

According to a Monday article from David Gilbert of the International Business Times, those media reports claim that the company would fail to meet Virgin Galactic owner Sir Richard Bransons January prediction that flights would begin by this summer. Instead, those flights would have to be pushed back until at least 2015 due to a defect found in the spacecrafts wings.

Branson, who first announced that he was investing in Virgin Galactic in 2004, initially predicted that commercial space flight would be a reality by 2007. Obviously, those predictions have not come to fruition, and now Gilbert said that it is highly unlikely that the vehicle will be ready for travel before the end of the summer.

However, President and CEO George T. Whitesides offered a different viewpoint, telling the IB Times that the company should reach space in just a few short months from now and that the companys current timetable has Richards flight taking place around the end of the year.

As for the other issue, Gizmodos Jamie Condliffe reports that members of the media had analyzed the small print in Virgin Galactics customer contract, and found that it promises to transport passengers to heights of at least 50 miles. According to Condliffe, that is some 12 miles short of the widely accepted boundary between the Earths atmosphere and outer space known as the Karman Line which lies at an altitude of 62 miles.

Virgin counters that it is using the 50 mile definition established by NASA first in the 1960s and most recently in 2005 to allow pilots of the rocket-powered X-15 aircraft as astronauts, the Gizmodo reporter said. However, the World Air Sports Federation, which serves as the governing body for astronautical world records, will only officially recognize an individual as an astronaut if they journey beyond the Karman Line, he added.

NASA and the US Air Force have a long tradition of celebrating everything above 50 miles (~80km) as spaceflight, and we look forward to joining those ranks soon as we push onward and upward, Whitesides said in a statement. We are still targeting 100km [62 miles]. As we have always noted, we will have to prove our numerical predictions via test flights as we continue through the latter phase of the test program.

See the original post here:

Does Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic Flier Really Take You To Space?