The flight from Spaceport America in New Mexico was not full
of wealthy thrill-seekers but rather was commissioned by the Italian government
for a pair of Italian air force officers and an Italian engineer who used the
mission as a training exercise and to conduct science experiments.
Instead of launching vertically in a traditional rocket and
capsule, Virgin Galactic flies its passengers in a piloted spacecraft called
Unity. The spacecraft is tethered to the belly of a twin-fuselage airplane,
which flies to an altitude of about 45,000 feet.
Once aloft, the airplane releases Unity, whose pilots ignite
its engine and guide it straight upward until it passes an altitude of about 50
miles before falling back to Earth. The flights do not reach orbit. Their up-and-down
trajectory traverses space for just a few minutes.
On Thursday, the spacecraft landed softly on a runway at
about 11:45 a.m. Eastern time after reaching a peak altitude of about 53 miles,
the company said on a live broadcast. With the completion of its first
commercial mission, the company said it hopes to begin flying a backlog of
customers who have paid as much as $450,000 per ticket. In some cases, they
have waited years to fly.
The Virgin Galactic flight comes days after a commercial
submersible operated by a private company, OceanGate, imploded, killing all
five people on board and raising questions about how such extreme adventures
should be regulated. In the world of commercial spaceflight, that debate has
been ongoing for years and is starting to intensify as a prohibition on strict
regulations imposed by Congress is set to expire.
The Federal Aviation Administration governs with a light
touch, issuing launch and reentry licenses to ensure space companies protect
people and property on the ground. But the regulations do not protect flight
participants, who only have to sign a waiver acknowledging they understand the
risks. In that way, going to space is governed by the same “informed consent”
standard used by other adventure industries such as skydiving.
Because the industry is considered to be in its infancy and
still developing new spacecraft and new technologies, Congress imposed a
“learning period” in 2004 that prohibited the FAA from issuing regulations for
passengers. That learning period was extended but is now set to expire by
October. Commercial spaceflight companies have argued that they have not made
as much progress as they had anticipated and so the learning period should be
extended once again.
In April, a report by Rand Corp. recommended allowing the
learning period to expire while ensuring that the FAA had the resources needed
“for the appropriate regulations.” In a statement to The Washington Post, the
agency said it “is taking preparatory actions now in the event the
moratorium/learning period expires and will continue on if it gets extended.”
Blue Origin, the space venture founded by Jeff Bezos, has
been working with the FAA after its suborbital rocket, called New Shepard,
suffered an engine failure during a flight without any people on board last
year. The company said it understands what caused the problems and is working
to resume flying soon. Bezos was on its first human spaceflight mission in
2021. Since then, it has flown some paying customers but has been grounded
since the accident last September.
Aboard the flight Thursday were Col. Walter Villadei and Lt.
Col. Angelo Landolfi of the Italian air force and Pantaleone Carlucci of the
Italian National Research Council. They brought a number of scientific payloads
to measure radiation in the mesosphere, the portion of the atmosphere between
30 and 50 miles high, and to test how spaceflight affects the human body.
They were accompanied by Colin Bennett, a Virgin Galactic
astronaut instructor, who flew on the first human spaceflight mission by the
company with Branson in 2021. The pilots in Unity are Mike Masucci, who has now
flown Unity to space four times, and Nicola Pecile, an Italian, who was on his
first flight aboard Unity.
Virgin Galactic, which has struggled with commercial
operations, hopes the mission will mark a turning point. In its last earnings
report, it said it lost $159 million in the first quarter this year, compared
with a $93 million loss the year before.
The company did not fly for nearly two years while it worked
to refurbish its systems, including the carrier plane. It is also focusing on a
next-generation spaceplane called the Delta Class, which the company said will
be able to fly more frequently than Unity. But it is not expected to be ready
until 2026.
A fter SpaceShipOne became the first privately funded
vehicle to reach space, Branson bought the rights to the technology and formed
Virgin Galactic in 2004. In 2014, Virgin Galactic suffered a fatal accident
when its space plane came apart during a test flight, killing one of the pilots
and severely injuring the other
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