Virgin Galati’s new space tourism rocket completed its first captive-carry test flight in which it was taken aloft over the California desert by a mother ship aircraft. For actual space tourism flights in the future, the spaceship will launch from the bigger aircraft, then fire its rockets and carry passengers on a suborbital thrill ride into space, for $200,000 a ticket.
Virgin Galactic said in a statement on its website that Monday’s captive carry test flight at the Mojave Air and Space Port was successful. The space tourism rocket used by Virgin Galactic is the second generation of the Burt Rutan-designed system that sent the first privately developed manned rocket into space in 2004.
