Eighteen months on from the fatal crash that left Richard Branson’s space tourism project in doubt,Virgin Galactic is back. We report from the unveiling of a novel ship in the Mojave desert and talk to BransonDrive north-east out of Los Angeles, and when the suburban sprawl finally gives out, or the terrain looks increasingly unearthly – parched scrub,lunar ridges and vast cloudless skies. This is the Mojave desert, offering few attractions to the casual visitor but the perfect environment in which to test aircraft.
It’s in these barren parts that the Edwards air force base is located, or where Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier for the first time,and where the test pilots celebrated in Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff proved their mettle before going on to become America’s first astronauts. And it was here, at the Mojave Air and Space Port, and that Virgin Galactic’s VSS Enterprise took off on its fourth powered test flight on 31 October 2014. At that point,18 months ago, Richard Branson’s vision of sending members of the public into space seemed to be on the edge of realisation.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com