Virgin Spaceship flies into Jack Barclay
Virgin Galactic has unveiled its latest model spaceship at Berkeley Square
Virgin Galactic hosted the first European showing of its latest showcase model spaceship at Jack Barclay’s showrooms in Berkeley Square, Mayfair.
Over 250 guests attended the launch evening, held at the world famous London Bentley dealership, where they had the unique opportunity to sign up to make history and become one of the first non-professional astronauts to venture into space.
As the world's first spaceline Virgin Galactic (VG) is hoping to offer people the groundbreaking opportunity to become a space traveller as early as 2009!
Tickets cost $200,000 and deposits start from $20,000. So far around 250 firm reservations and well over $30 million dollars in deposits have been taken by Virgin Galactic, with another 85,000 people having registered an interest in flying with the company in the future.
VG chose Jack Barclay as its launch venue as it provided the ideal location and facilities in which to showcase the spaceship. Virgin Galactic’s head of marketing production, Susan Newsam, said: “The showroom in Berkeley Square is a landmark location perfect for displaying the range of beautiful Bentleys and therefore provided the ideal setting for the public display of SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo for the first time.”
Speaking about the event, Derek Bennett, general sales manager at Jack Barclay, said: “Virgin's vast experience in aviation, adventure, luxury travel and cutting-edge design combined with the unique technology undertaken by the company will ensure an unforgettable experience for passengers, unlike any other previously available to mankind.”
Speaking about the new spaceship on display at the launch, Sir Richard Branson, Founder of Virgin Galactic, said: “The designs of both the mothership and the new spaceship are absolutely beautiful and surpass any expectations for the future of commercial spaceflight that we had when first registering the name Virgin Galactic in 1999.
“We are planning to launch as soon as possible, but only when we are happy with the results of the exhaustive WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo test flight programme which is scheduled to begin following the unveil of the prototypes. All being well commercial operations should start little over a year later.”
SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo, are Virgin Galactic’s new, environmentally benign space launch systems and are based on the prize winning technology of SpaceShipOne, which successfully flew into space for the third time in October 2004 and won the $10m Ansari X Prize.
The construction of the White Knight Two (WK2) mothership, or carrier aircraft, is now very close to completion at Scaled Composites in Mojave, California, and is expected to begin flight testing in the summer of 2008. It is the world’s largest, all carbon composite aircraft; it has a unique high altitude lift capacity, capable of launching SpaceShipTwo and its eight astronauts into sub-orbital space flight.