Suborbital flight of billionaire Richard Branson "to the edge of space"

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Suborbital flight of billionaire Richard Branson "to the edge of space"
Suborbital flight of billionaire Richard Branson "to the edge of space"
Anonim

On Sunday, the brave billionaire Richard Branson took to space aboard his own cruise missile ship, taking astrotourism one step closer to reality and ahead of his richer rival Jeff Bezos.

Nearly 71-year-old Branson and five crew members of his space travel company Virgin Galactic ascended 53.5 miles (86 kilometers) above the New Mexico desert - enough to experience three to four minutes of zero gravity, where the sky turns black. and the horizon of the earth is curved., - and then headed back to land on the runway.

"It was all just magical," Branson said jubilantly as he returned aboard a gleaming white space plane dubbed Unity.

The short up-and-down flight - part of the spaceplane flight took only 15 minutes, or about the same as Alan Shepard's first flight into space in the United States in 1961 - has become a flashy and commercial advertisement for Virgin Galactic, which plans to start taking paid customers to fun walks next year.

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What can be seen "space tourist"

The speed during a suborbital flight is less than the first space flight (that is, less than 7, 9 km / s.), The altitude can be different - from several tens to 100 kilometers, while exceeding the altitude barrier of 100 kilometers translates the suborbital flight into the category of space flight. G-forces during such a flight are lower, and, accordingly, the requirements for the health of a tourist are less stringent than during a regular space flight.

At this height, you can see our planet as it is usually seen from real space.… Companies developing technology for suborbital flights plan to include several orbits around the Earth in the program. Therefore, the planet can be viewed from all sides. The flight will take very little time: from 30 minutes to several hours. But this trip will be remembered for a long time. For example, astronauts of the ISS observe 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets during one Earth day.

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