Virgin Galactic CEO Richard Branson has claim his company will reach space sooner than thought , with his own flight to space following shortly after .
Speaking to the websiteCNBC , he said Virgin Galactic was “ more than tantalizingly close ” to conducting its first trial flight in space .
" We should be in space within weeks , not calendar month , ” he enounce . “ And then we will be in space with myself in months and not age . ”
He added : " We will be in space with people not too long after that so we have got a very , very exciting duo of months ahead . "
Virgin Galactic has been steadilycompleting testsof its SpaceShipTwo space plane , named VSS Unity , over the past few years , fly to high and higher altitudes .
However the company has yet to actually reach space , with hundreds of pay customer hold off for it to carry out its hope of sending tourists into blank space .
At about$250,000 a ticket , customers will be afford about six minute of lightness as the vehicle fill out a suborbital flight . The aeroplane takes off under its carrier aircraft , WhiteKinghtTwo , before detaching at a high altitude to elicit its rocket motor , and land on its own .
The first test flight to make space will likely just have two pilots on board . But Branson has said antecedently that he himself will flee on the first passenger flight , to manifest the plane ’s potentiality .
He noted that he would eventually like the cost of a ticket on Virgin Galactic to reduce to $ 40,000 or $ 50,000 in the next 10 class .
Branson has also made much of a “ rivalry ” between himself , SpaceX ’s Elon Musk , and Blue Origin ’s Jeff Bezos , to take tourists into quad . But the three company have pretty unlike goals .
SpaceX and Blue Origin are both working on rockets , not planing machine . The former is focusing more on fulfilling a NASA contract to launch astronauts to the International Space Station ( ISS ) , start inmid-2019 . Blue Origin ’s recyclable New Shepard rocket , meanwhile , is a precursor to their grander goal of building and operating avariety of vehicle .
Still , if Branson is correct then this effort would be a pretty big boon for Virgin Galactic . The caller has been working to recover from thetragic accidentin 2014 that killed one of its pilots , Michael Alsbury , when a re - ingress system was unexpectedly deploy and the plane was destroyed .
Branson has madelofty claims beforeabout accomplish blank space . Now we ’ll have to wait and see if this one is unfeigned .
