A Look Inside The Virgin Galactic WhiteKnightTwo

In 2004, Sir Richard Branson founded a genius initiative to propel the space game to the next stages of travel.

At the start of December last year, Virgin Galactic’s suborbital spaceliner, VSS Unity, made it 90 kilometres past the boundary of earth and space for the first time and a couple of months ago, they tried again with successful results.

In early February, the VSS Unity took a very similar excursion but with a crew and tourists on board alongside the WhiteKnightTwo. The space-tourist, Beth Moses, was taken to the edge of the atmosphere, where the Unity detached from the WhiteKnightTwo and hurtled, all engines blazing, to an altitude of 90 km at three times the speed of sound. It was then that the crew and Beth could just sit and take in the view.

“It was crystal, crystal clear,” Moses said to media after the flight. “Just super, super, super high def[inition]. And interestingly, you could sort of see ice crystals right out the window, and then the beautiful curvature of the Earth!”

This flight has made Moses the first woman to fly to space on a commercial vehicle, or in other words, the first space tourist.

Moses is the chief astronaut instructor at Virgin Galactic, so when you buy your ticket to space there’s a good chance she will be there to coach you through the zero G experience.

Images: Virgin Galactic