Virgin Galactic sends first commercial pilots to space

Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic is taking the lead in the race to take paying passengers into space as it prepares to carry out its first test flight with commercial pilots on Thursday.

The two pilots will take off at dawn and attempt to reach an altitude 50 miles above the Earth. The craft is meant to eventually hold six paying passengers but for now the only extra passenger aside from the two pilots will be a mannequin fitter with sensors to analyse the effect that the flight has on the body.

“We are essentially learning how to best fly the trajectory to space,” said George Whiteside, CEO of Virgin Galactic and The Spaceship Company. “The craft will be flown to space – it’s not computer driven. So we’re learning the best piloting techniques.”

Richard Branson, who founded Virgin Galactic back in 2004, said the aim of the company was to be the first to offer customers paid-for suborbital flights.

“It’s a day we’ve been waiting for a long time. We’ve had our challenges but to get to the point where we are at least in range of space flight is a big deal,” said Whitesides.

Virgin Galactic has not set a date for its first commercial space flight although there are already 700 people signed up for it, including actors Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hanks and singer Justin Bieber. The price for the flight is currently $250,000.

Branson's main rival in the space race, Blue Origin (owned by Jeff Bezos), has already flown higher but in a spacecraft operated by computers and not humans. SpaceX (owned by Elon Musk), on the other hand, is focused on carrying equipment for NASA's programmes.