Warning, middle-class Earthmen. By the end of this post, your dreams of low-cost space travel will be delayed. Above: WhiteKnightTwo Eve’s Maiden Flight. Photo Credit Schereer Scherer.
We all know the Virgin Galactic WhiteKnightTwo can actually fly. Now, Wired has an exclusive video of the plane in action, further squashing any scepticism of the plane.
Tipster Brian Houston over at Videosift.com received an email from Virgin’s Velocity rewards program with the above image attached. He reckons it’s hinting at the ability to redeem your Velocity frequent flyer points for a seat on their Virgin Galactic flights. I reckon he’s probably right. Obviously we’ll have to wait for February to come around before we know for certain, but if it is the case, expect to pay an absolute crapload of frequent flyer points for the privilege. In fact, if you don’t already fly Virgin everywhere, and have a Velocity rewards credit card for all your expenses, I’d say you probably won’t ever earn enough points to redeem a Galactic flight. In any case, we’ll see what Virgin have to say come February…
We saw ground tests last week, but yesterday morning WhiteKnightTwo–the funky-looking double-wide plane that will take SpaceShipTwo and its cargo of millionaires on suborbital spaceflights–finally took off on its maiden voyage.
Virgin Galactic’s WhiteKnightTwo, the ship that will deliver SpaceShipTwo into orbit, just started performing runway tests. We’re one step closer to personal space travel, folks.
