Spaceport America, the first commercial spaceport, is near completion after five years of construction. Located in New Mexico, the spaceport will be a flight hub for Virgin Galactic. The company, under Virgin Group, plans to offer suborbital flights to the public. The spacecrafts hold up to six passengers and can fly up to almost 70 miles above the Earth, providing thousand mile views and five minutes of zero gravity.
No launch dates have been announced yet, but Virgin hopes to begin the first test flights later this year. Around 400 have reserved their spots into space once the test flights have finished. Virgin Group founder, Sir Richard Branson and his family will be the first to fly on the new spacecrafts into space.
While reading this, I noticed that this somehow relates to the first flights back in the early 1900s. When the first commercial airlines were introduced decades later, flying was considered as a luxury that only a few can afford. Now because of advanced technology in planes and airline expansions, flights have become more affordable to the public and can fly to places that would take countless hours to drive to in only a few hours. Will space travel become similar to this in the next few decades?
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This article got my attention as soon as I saw the title! I think that this is going to be a good thing as well as a bad one. I have always wanted to go up in space and if I ever got the opportunity to go that I would love to. I think that if this comes out, then more into the future it will become like the airplane situation and become more available to the general public. I am sort of against this though because I think that the time it takes for astronauts to be able to go up into space is tremendious. I think people should need to take the same precautions as they do and I feel that this is something that only professionals should do. I am also totally against it costing 200,000 dollars to go! That is ridiculous. Bill Gates and the President are the only "public" people going onto that. This was a great article and I enjoyed reading it.
ReplyDeleteThis article is very interesting. It is amazing to me that we have gone from the Wright brothers to this in a little over 100 years. I think that this would be cool but not for $200,000. I can think of a lot better thing to do with that kind of money.
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