Perhaps not quite the virgin Mary or an Angel coming down to see the minions on earth, but she is called Enterprise and under the watchful eye of Virgin’s chairman, Richard Branson, she made her first flight through the sub-orbital level of the atmosphere. Bringing space travel one step closer.

The craft was taken up by aircraft rather than launched from the ground. The craft was then released and allowed to glide back to base successfully.

The commercial nature of these flights pioneered by Virgin may be dubious with a single flight merely taking you outside of the atmosphere for a few minutes of weightlessness. However it is an important step for space travel, and later when colonies exist on the moon and beyond,  Virgin Galactic are likely to be one of the forerunners of commercial traffic.

The company state they are nearly full for the bookings for their first year of operations, a number expected to be around 500, giving the company in the region of $100,000,000 for the venture. We poor people can only hope that Easyjet decide to venture into the low-cost space travel budget. Although im not sure how beneficial that will be…

References
T3