Virgin Galactic Tourist spaceship makes it first Powered Flight

Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic tourist spaceship makes it first powered flight and successfully performed its first rocket-powered test flight of the SpaceShipTwo. Have a look at the video…

Images © Virgin-Galactic

On Monday at 7:55 AM PDT, SpaceShipTwo (SST) was released from its mother ship and rockets fired for first time.

Virgin Galactic spaceship reached a velocity of Mach 1.2 at an altitude of 55,000 feet, above the Mohave Desert with a 16-second burn of its 30-ton thrust rocket engine.

“Today was the most significant day in the program,” Branson told NBC News afterward. “I think that for those people who have been good enough to stick with us for the last eight years, who signed up early on, their time to become astronauts is very soon now. … We’ll soon be able to make their dreams come true.”