Virgin Galactic Hikes Prices As Ticket Sales Restart 

Virgin Galactic Hikes Prices As Ticket Sales Restart 
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Virgin Galactic Hikes Prices As Ticket Sales Restart

The American spaceflight company confirmed it will sell tickets starting at $450,000 a seat.  

The price has gone up 
Weeks after Virgin Galactic‘s founder Richard Branson took a flight to the edge of space, the company has significantly increased the price it‘s charging ordinary mortals to $450,000 a seat.  The space tourism company previously offered a space trip for $250,000 per seat and around 600 people have already paid for tickets.  Virgin Galactic’s first successful mission of its VSS Unity spacecraft was on a piloted test flight in 2018.

In June, the space tourism company received approval from the U.S. aviation safety regulator to fly people to space. VSS Unity will lift off under the wing of a carrier plane, which hauls the space plane to an altitude of about 50,000 ft/15,000 m.  

Virgin Galactic‘s founder Richard Branson and the crew

The price of space tourism 
Would-be space tourists have three options: the purchase of a single seat, a multi-seat package or to book out the entire flight. Seats for microgravity research and professional astronaut training are also available at a higher price - $600,000 apiece.

Unity is a sub-orbital vehicle; therefore, it can't achieve the velocity and altitude necessary to keep it up in space to circle the globe. Passengers will achieve three to four minutes of weightlessness and get to see Earth against the blackness of space. The maximum height achievable by Unity is roughly 90km/295,000ft.  Virgin Galactic is preparing to start commercial operations in 2022. 

Hanh Dinh
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