Virgin Galactic’s passenger spaceplane, which is designed to take tourists to the edge of space, flew its first rocket-powered test flight on Monday, breaking the sound barrier at high altitude.
SpaceShipTwo (SS2) ignited its engine after being released by WhiteKnightTwo, a plane that carried it to 14km above California’s Mojave Desert, British billionaire Richard Branson’s firm said in a statement.
As planned, the rocket burned for 16 seconds — enough to propel the spacecraft 15.2km at 1.2 times the speed of sound, the statement said.
Photo: Rueters / MarsScientific.com / Clay Center Observatory
“For the first time, we were able to prove the key components of the system, fully integrated and in flight,” said Branson, who observed the flight from the ground.
He expects that the successful test would pave the way to “full space flight by the year’s end.”
Next time, the company plans to keep the rocket going longer to bring SpaceShipTwo to an altitude of more than 100km, on the edge of space.
During the rocket-powered flight, pilots Mark Stucky and Mike Alsbury commanded SS2, which landed safely on the runway of the Mohave Air and Space Port shortly after 8am, just 10 minute after taking off.
More than 500 people have already reserved seats and paid a deposit on the US$200,000 ticket price for a minutes-long suborbital flight on SS2.
Branson has also said that he will bring his family on one of the flights to show his confidence in the safety of the spacecraft.
SpaceShipTwo can carry six passengers and is the commercial version of SpaceShipOne — the first private spacecraft to reach the edge of space in 2004 — which is now on displace at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington.
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Filipino farmers like Romeo Wagayan have been left with little choice but to let their vegetables rot in the field rather than sell them at a loss, as rising oil prices linked to the Iran war drive up the cost of harvesting, labor and transport. “There’s nothing we can do,” said Wagayan, a 57-year old vegetable farmer in the northern Philippine province of Benguet. “If we harvest it, our losses only increase because of labor, transportation and packing costs. We don’t earn anything from it. That’s why we decided not to harvest at all,” he said. Soaring costs caused by the Middle East
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
RSS