Virgin Galactic

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Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 17 total)

  • Anonymous
    Guest

    Tete_de_cuvee
    Participant

    pixelmeister
    Participant

    I’m impressed that Virgin are ploughing ahead with this. I just wonder how many people will want to spend a large sum of money for 5 minutes weightlessness and a brief view of the upper atmosphere. Not really certain who the target market is. It doesn’t strike me as the sort of thing that will have a lot of repeat business. The fabulously wealthy would opt for cutting a deal with someone like the Russians for a proper space ride. VG seems to be more akin to an expensive fairground ride.


    CallMeIshmael
    Participant

    400 have already stumped up £125,000 per ticket.


    Tete_de_cuvee
    Participant

    The home base airport to service the spaceship planes is near completion in New Mexico. Looks as though this is becoming a reality.


    pixelmeister
    Participant

    Hmm… still think that £125,000 is a damned high price to pay for a fairground ride. I could understand if the punter got from A to B for the money, but no, this is more akin to the old Goodwood Travel jollies on Concorde around the Bay of Biscay, but with a swingeing price tag. P.T. Barnum was absolutely right.

    The press coverage is novel. Branding this as ‘space tourism’ is stretching it to beyond the bounds of credibility. The passengers will get about 45 minutes at a maximum of 360,000ft. The trajectory is sub-orbital. Put in perspective, that’s about half the altitude that Alan Shepherd achieved as the first US man in space. So are punters being taken for a ride ? I think so.


    BigDog.
    Participant

    …”Virgin Galactic Spaceship in catastrophic explosion and crash: One pilot dead and another critical as experimental plane blows up on test flight over California…

    An awful tragedy for the test pilot and his family who I believe to be are British Virgin 747 crew.


    ImissConcorde
    Participant

    How very sad.

    Coverage in The Sunday Times should make interesting reading.


    SimonS1
    Participant

    Indeed sad news. We wouldn’t be where we are now if people hadn’t been prepared to push the boundaries.


    LuganoPirate
    Participant

    It is sad and you have to salute the courage of these pioneers. I didn’t know Old Beardie and his family will be the first passengers on the first flight (if it happens) and I have to admire him for this.


    MartynSinclair
    Participant

    I didn’t realise until I heard the news reports that the boundaries VG were trying to push go beyond taking fare paying passengers to the edge of space.

    VG are also wanting to use the project to create travel between Europe/USA and Australia in just a few hours.

    Whilst SRB has always been the innovative one, surely a project of this magnitude, needs more than a publicity seeking (meant with no disrespect) airline boss.

    I sincerely hope that something positive can come out of this tragedy but for now, condolences to the family concerned for their loss… another aviation pioneer, sadly taken in a quest to benefit future generations of travellers……


    Bath_VIP
    Participant

    This is a tragedy but I do hope they learn from this and keep going forward. I would love to be able to travel on this at some point in the future.

    Martyn, Branson is the funder & champion of this project but he is not the project leader. That will be Burt Rutan who has demonstrated throughout his career that he is one of the most innovative aerospace engineers we have ever known.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burt_Rutan


    Globalti
    Participant

    It’s a little cheaper, no more dangerous and certainly more sociable to join one of the massive guided groups going up Everest. I’d say the boasting points are about equal too, which is what it’s all about isn’t it?


    transtraxman
    Participant

    It seems that the truth is now coming out.

    Tragic it is for any pioneers to suffer injury or loss of life in any new projects pushing the boundaries of technology, and our condolences go out to the families who suffer.

    However, when you start to hear/read that the technology used was heavily criticised as being too simple, too dangerous and just an uncontrolable bomb ready to go off then you start to question management´s judgement. This not being the first explosion makes for more questions. Together with all that, the fact that some senior engineers had already abandoned the project as being too dangerous makes one think that it had become a prisoner of its own hype.

    The target date for commercial launch of spring 2015 was never really on the cards. Now it must be postponed for at least 12 months. Lots of reservations are being cancelled.

    Branson´s PR skills will be needed to be put to good use. On the other hand it makes one think that he has taken his eye off the ball with reference to his favourite toy – Virgin Atlantic. He has now, obviously, handed over all decision making to DELTA as it becomes more and more so a subsidiary of that US airline(even with 49%).

    Remember that with the setting up of Virgin America he was not allowed to own more than 25% nor was he allowed to have any hand in the day to day running of the business. That is what transatlantic reciprocity means.

    Oh bearded one!! Get off the scene, retire to your tax haven to live off your franchise earnings and let everybody else try to recuperate some of the disaster you have sown.

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