Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic just got another step closer to flying tourists to space

Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic just got another step closer to flying tourists to space

5 years ago
Anonymous $CLwNLde341

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2018/05/29/richard-bransons-virgin-galactic-just-got-another-step-closer-to-flying-tourists-to-space/

Richard Branson is a step closer to getting to space. On Tuesday, Virgin Galactic, the company he founded more than a decade ago with the goal of flying tourists to the edge of space and back, performed another test flight over the Mojave Desert in California.

SpaceShipTwo “Unity,” a winged space plane, went supersonic for the second time, firing its engine for just 31 seconds. But that was enough to power the vehicle to an altitude of nearly 22 miles and a maximum speed of almost Mach 2, or twice the speed of sound.