Virgin Galactic Space Flight Looking To Extend Beyond Sub-Orbital Services; Sir Richard Branson Plans To Go To The Moon & Walk Around It
Virgin Galactic space flight is aiming to extend its services beyond sub-orbital flights, according to the company's CEO George Whitesides who spoke with CNN outside space conference in UK last week.
The idea of seeing the moon within your reach or even the possibility of walking around it is something unlikely these days, but with the technology and the capabilities of space companies such as Virgin Galactic makes it highly possible, perhaps over the next 30 years or so.
"If we can make significant progress on the challenge of reusable space access then I think that opens up all kinds of opportunities in the future," Whitesides told CNN.
"One of the directions that might open up is high-speed point-to-point travel on Earth -- so that you could go from London to Singapore in an hour or go from London to Los Angeles in a couple of hours.
"We may be able to open up the opportunity for habitats in low Earth orbit, we could make it more affordable to do longer term flights -- even trips around the Moon. I think he [Branson] has high aspirations for a lot of these different activities."
Presently, Virgin Galactic is determined on finalizing the test flight program in preparation for the upcoming commercial flight to orbit space for the next year, it aims to conduct its test flights on a weekly basis once the service is ready, Whitesides added.
He also revealed to the delegates of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory space conference that there are already 650 people who have signed up for the first ever-commercial flight in space, and that it would double for the next couple of years.
However, Virgin Galactic is not the only company venturing in outer space. Blue Origin, founded by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, revealed that it has been developing technologies that would allow ordinary people to have access to space. SpaceX, on the other hand, has already provided goods to the International Space Station.
"This is a great time," Whitesides suggesting that a new era is coming. "There's a renaissance in space access -- between us and Blue and SpaceX and all these companies -- it's so exciting.
"I think there's a very good chance that we're alive when we actually find another 'Earth' in another solar system -- how profound is that?"
Whitesides is really fascinated by the idea of finding Earth-like planets, believing that it will come to a point where we would be able to discover seasons on other worlds.
For ordinary people like us, these ideas will remain to be in our dreams until 2043, but for Whitesides who have already signed up for a seat to travel in space, this already marks the start of his "new era."
"I'm actually a customer as well," he told CNN. "My wife and I bought two tickets in 2005.
"I think it's important that I fly because just as Richard's flight is such an important signal to our customers that he believes in the system, similarly I need to do that as well."
