Future
Virgin Galactic aims to become the world's first commercial space line. The test-flight program is expected to continue through 2011, and future tests will focus on rocket motor testing and powered flights. Eventually, the rocket plane will be taken 60,000 feet above the Earth by its carrier and fire rockets to propel itself into space. A total of 370 customers have already placed a deposit (totaling $50 million) for a place on the flight, and about 80,000 people have placed their names on the waiting list. The trip will cost about US$200,000, and passengers will experience a few minutes of weightlessness during the suborbital flight.
The passenger-carrying commercial launches will initially occur at Virgin Galactic's launch pad at Spaceport America, near Upham, New Mexico.
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Famous quotes containing the word future:
“It has no future but itself—
Its infinite contain
Its past—enlightened to perceive
New periods of pain.”
—Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)
“If ever the search for a tranquil belief should end,
The future might stop emerging out of the past,
Out of what is full of us; yet the search
And the future emerging out of us seem to be one.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“The person who does not worry about the future will shortly have worries about the present.”
—Chinese proverb.
Confucian Analects.