A three-man crew from Italy is set on Thursday to board a passenger rocket plane operated by Virgin Galactic, the venture British billionaire Richard Branson founded in 2004, for the company's first commercial flight to the edge of space.
, catering to wealthy would-be citizen astronauts willing to pay large sums of money to experience the exhilaration of supersonic rocket speed, weightlessness and the spectacle of spaceflight.
Taking the fourth passenger seat is their Virgin Galactic trainer, Colin Bennett, who earned his astronaut wings on the July 2021 flight with Branson as the company's lead operations engineer. Unity will be operated by two Virgin Galactic pilots - retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Michael Masucci and Nicola Pecile, who formerly held the same rank in the Italian air force.
Reaching its high-altitude launch point at about 50,000 feet , Unity is to be released from the mothership and fall away as the spaceplane's rocket is ignited, sending the vehicle streaking straight upward at supersonic speed to the blackness of space some 50-55 miles high. Virgin Galactic had projected booking its first 1,000 paying customers, charging about $250,000 per seat, by the time commercial service opened. Corporate officials have said they envision eventually building a large enough fleet to accommodate 400 flights annually.
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