Scaled Composites, Virgin Galactic Unveil WhiteKnightTwo

摘要

With all the pageantry of a king's arrival, the WhiteKnightTwo - a huge flying launch pad to support commercial suborbital space travel - made its public debut here July 28. The rollout of the colossal composite plane signaled the first phase of a critical test program to establish a private space-liner business - Virgin Galactic, a venture being bankrolled by British entrepreneur and billionaire Richard Branson and his Virgin Group. Looking like a giant catamaran for the sky, two individual fuselages are topped by a large, 42.7-meter long stretch of wing. The aircraft will straddle and carry Space-ShipTwo to a drop altitude of about 14.6 kilometers. SpaceShipTwo -- a six passenger, two-pilot spacecraft - once released, will rocket paying passengers to a maximum planned altitude of 110 kilometers above the Earth's surface.