Looking to get away? For $250,000, you can purchase a ticket that will take you on a trip out of this world.
Billionaire Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic released new pictures on Tuesday of the interior of his company’s space plan that will offer a 360-degree view of Earth for passengers who pay big dollars for the 90-minute trip 65 miles above the planet.
Passengers will load into the air-launched plane VSS Unity and undergo a series of maneuvers, including being propelled to 55,000 feet aboard a jet carrier before being dropped into a free-fall. From there, rocket boosters will accelerate the plane into micro-gravity, where passengers will be allowed to maneuver inside the cabin.
Mood-lighting is used to subtly reflect back and elevate the human responses to each stage of flight. At the pinnacle, as the Earth comes into view against the black sky of space, all lighting is extinguished, bringing an instant focus to the profoundly beautiful vista. pic.twitter.com/ArRl6G9qmT
— Virgin Galactic (@virgingalactic) July 28, 2020
SpaceShipTwo Unity’s cabin is sized to allow for an out-of-seat weightlessness experience for the astronauts on board. Soft cabin surfaces and elements become hand and footholds, allowing astronauts to explore the cabin. pic.twitter.com/0UQvBb5Bhm
— Virgin Galactic (@virgingalactic) July 28, 2020
Our spaceship is designed to carry astronauts but can also take payloads, or a combination of the two. This capability provides the scientific community access to high-quality microgravity, as well as to generally inaccessible regions of the upper atmosphere. pic.twitter.com/UMx6Lk0Ren
— Virgin Galactic (@virgingalactic) July 28, 2020
Tuesday marked the unveiling of the interior of the plane’s cabin, which features the highest-grade aluminum and carbon fiber, according to Branson.
“It is a cabin which has been designed specifically to allow thousands of people to achieve their dreams of space flight safely and to maximize every aspect of that fabulous journey,” said Branson.
Designers with Virgin Galactic said the cabin will feature a lighting system that will be used for functionality and to heighten the emotive response of the trip.
“We’ve programmed it for different phases of the flight, whether it’s using a calming color on your cruise up to release altitude, or we can add more vibrancy through the energetic rocket boost phase, or we turn it off completely while you’re in space and it’s during this phase that we let Earth itself provide the ultimate beautiful lighting,” said a designer during the reveal of the cabin design.
More than 600 people have already signed up for the experience, which is expected to launch next year.
