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This December 12, 2017, handout photograph provided by Blue Origin shows the New Shepard Booster landing on a pad in West Texas after a successful test flight. Photo: Agence France-Presse

Space tourism flights with Virgin and Blue Origin are mere months from lift-off. Their journeys will be worlds apart

While Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic will take passengers aloft in something resembling a private jet, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin will use send them hurtling into space atop an 18-metre rocket

Space

The two companies leading the pack in the pursuit of space tourism say they are just months away from their first passenger flights, though neither has set a firm date.

Virgin Galactic, founded by British billionaire Richard Branson, and Blue Origin, by Amazon creator Jeff Bezos, are racing to be the first to finish their tests – with both companies using radically different technology.

Neither Virgin nor Blue Origin’s passengers will find themselves orbiting the Earth: instead, their weightless experience will last just minutes. It’s an offering far different from the first space tourists, who paid tens of millions of dollars to travel to the International Space Station (ISS) in the 2000s.

Having paid for a much cheaper ticket – costing US$250,000 with Virgin, and US$200,000-US$300,000 with Blue Origin – the new round of space tourists will be propelled 80-100km high, before coming back down to Earth. By comparison, the ISS is in orbit 400km from our planet.
This May 29, 2018, handout photograph provided by Virgin Galactic shows the Virgin Spaceship Unity. Photo: Agence France-Presse
This 2005 file photo shows Richard Branson arriving in a spacesuit for the announcement of Australia's first private astronauts to sign up for the Virgin Galactic flights into space. The flights are months away from reality. Photo: Agence France-Presse
The goal is to approach or pass through the imaginary line marking where space begins – either the Karman line, at 100km, or the 80km boundary recognised by the US Air Force.

At this altitude, the sky looks black and the curvature of the Earth can be seen clearly.

With Virgin Galactic, six passengers and two pilots are boarded onto SpaceShipTwo VSS Unity, which resembles a private jet.

The VSS Unity will be attached to a carrier spacecraft – the WhiteKnightTwo – from which it will then detach at around 15,000 metres. Once released, the spaceship will fire up its rocket, and head for space.

Then, the passengers will float in zero-gravity for several minutes, before coming back to Earth.

The descent is slowed down by a “feathering” system that sees the spacecraft’s tail pivot, as if arching, before returning to normal and gliding to land at Virgin’s “spaceport” in the New Mexico desert.

In total, the mission lasts between 90 minutes and two hours. During a May 29 test in California’s Mojave desert, the spaceship reached an altitude of 34km.
This June 19, 2016 handout photograph provided by Blue Origin shows the New Shepard booster landing during its fourth test flight in an undisclosed location. Photo: Agence France-Presse
Jeff Bezos, founder of Blue Origin, at the New Shepard's West Texas launch facility before the rocket's maiden voyage. Photo: Agence France-Presse
In October 2014, the Virgin spaceship broke down in flight due to a piloting error, killing one of two pilots on board. The tests later resumed with a new craft.

The company has now also reached a deal to open a second “spaceport” at Italy’s Tarente-Grottaglie airport, in the south of the country.

Branson in May told BBC Radio 4 that he hoped to himself be one of the first passengers in the next 12 months. About 650 people make up the rest of the waiting list, Virgin said.

Blue Origin, meanwhile, has developed a system closer to the traditional rocket: the New Shepard.

On this journey, six passengers take their place in a “capsule” fixed to the top of an 18-metre-long rocket. After launching, it detaches and continues its trajectory. During an April 29 test, the capsule made it 106km high.

After a few minutes of weightlessness, during which passengers can take in the view through large windows, the capsule gradually falls back to earth with three large parachutes and retrorockets used to slow the spacecraft.
This December 12, 2017, handout photograph provided by Blue Origin shows the crew capsule in an undisclosed place. Photo: Agence France-Presse
This December 3, 2016, handout photograph provided by Virgin Galactic shows the Virgin Spaceship Unity as it touches down after flying freely for the first time in the Mojave Desert, California. Photo: Agence France-Presse
From take-off to landing, the flight took 10 minutes during the latest test.

Until now, tests have only been carried out using dummies at Blue Origin’s West Texas site.

But one of its directors, Rob Meyerson, said in June the first human tests would come “soon.”

Meanwhile, another company official, Yu Matsutomi, said during a conference Wednesday that the first tests with passengers would take place “at the end of this year,” according to Space News.

SpaceX and Boeing are developing their own capsules to transport Nasa astronauts, most likely in 2020, after delays – a significant investment that the companies will likely make up for by offering private passenger flights.

“If you’re looking to go to space, you’ll have quadruple the menu of options that you ever had before,” said Phil Larson, assistant dean at the University of Colorado, Boulder’s College of Engineering and Applied Science.

Longer term, the Russian firm that manufactures Soyuz rockets is studying the possibility of taking tourists back to the ISS. And a US start-up called Orion Span announced earlier this year it hopes to place a luxury space hotel into orbit within a few years – but the project is still in its early stages.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Space tourist flights just ‘months away’
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