Virgin Galactic is a company within Richard Branson's Virgin Group which plans to provide sub-orbital spaceflights to space tourists, suborbital launches for space science missions and orbital launches of small satellites. Further in the future Virgin Galactic hopes to offer orbital human spaceflights as well. Virgin Galactic's spacecraft are launched from a large aeroplane, giving the spacecraft more initial speed and altitude than if it were launched from the ground.
Read more about Virgin Galactic: Mothership, The Spaceship Company, Competition, Fleet, Base, Corporate, Commencement of Space Flights, Potential Collaboration With NASA
Famous quotes containing the words virgin and/or galactic:
“A hidden strength
Which if Heav’n gave it, may be term’d her own:
‘Tis chastity, my brother, chastity:
She that has that, is clad in compleat steel,
And like a quiver’d Nymph with Arrows keen
May trace huge Forests, and unharbour’d Heaths,
Infamous Hills, and sandy perilous wildes,
Where through the sacred rayes of Chastity,
No savage fierce, Bandite, or mountaneer
Will dare to soyl her Virgin purity,”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“When the galactic sea was sucked
And all the dry seabed unlocked,
I sent my creature scouting on the globe,
That globe itself of hair and bone....”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)