{"id":5420,"date":"2018-12-13T11:36:36","date_gmt":"2018-12-13T11:36:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/virgin-galactic-aims-to-reach-space-for-first-time\/"},"modified":"2018-12-13T11:36:36","modified_gmt":"2018-12-13T11:36:36","slug":"virgin-galactic-aims-to-reach-space-for-first-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/virgin-galactic-aims-to-reach-space-for-first-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Virgin Galactic aims to reach space for first time"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div property=\"articleBody\">\n<figure class=\"media-landscape has-caption full-width lead\"><span class=\"image-and-copyright-container\"><\/p>\n<p>                <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"js-image-replace\" alt=\"Virgin Galactic plane\" src=\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/320\/cpsprodpb\/1E38\/production\/_104763770_vg_third_powered_flight_-_take_off_hd_ready.jpg\" width=\"976\" height=\"549\"\/><span class=\"off-screen\">Image copyright<\/span><br \/>\n                 <span class=\"story-image-copyright\">Virgin Galactic<\/span><\/p>\n<p>            <\/span><figcaption class=\"media-caption\"><span class=\"off-screen\">Image caption<\/span><br \/>\n                <span class=\"media-caption__text\"><br \/>\n                    Virgin Galactic&#8217;s plane will be carried to a height of 12,000m before its rocket ignites<br \/>\n                <\/span><br \/>\n            <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"story-body__introduction\">Entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson&#8217;s Virgin Galactic says its latest test flight, due later on Thursday, could see it reach space for the first time.<\/p>\n<p>The company said the fourth flight of its SpaceShipTwo passenger rocket ship would &#8220;aim to fly higher and faster&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Its intention is to reach a height of more than 80km, the altitude at which space is said to begin.<\/p>\n<p>Sir Richard is in a race with Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos to send the first fee-paying passengers into space.<\/p>\n<p>He founded the commercial spaceflight company in 2004, shortly after Mr Musk started SpaceX and Jeff Bezos established Blue Origin.<\/p>\n<ul class=\"story-body__unordered-list\">\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/science-environment-45494204\" class=\"story-body__link\">Champagne for space tourists takes flight<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/business-45919650\" class=\"story-body__link\">The billionaires fuelling a space race<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In 2008, Virgin Galactic first promised sub-orbital spaceflight trips for tourists would be taking place &#8220;within 18 months&#8221;. It has since regularly made similar promises to have space flights airborne in the near future.<\/p>\n<p>But delays and a fatal crash in 2014 prevented Sir Richard&#8217;s original ambitions.<\/p>\n<p>The latest flight of the plane, also known as the VSS Unity, will take place over the Mojave desert in southern California.<\/p>\n<p>The company said it planned to &#8220;burn the rocket motor for durations which will see our pilots and spaceship reach a space altitude for the first time&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>However, it cautioned: &#8220;Although this could happen as soon as the next flight, the nature of flight test means that it may take us a little longer to get to that milestone.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/business-46550862\">Source<\/a> by <a href=\"\">[author_name]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Image copyright Virgin Galactic Image caption Virgin Galactic&#8217;s plane will be carried to a height of 12,000m before its rocket ignites Entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson&#8217;s Virgin Galactic says its latest test flight, due later on Thursday, could see it reach space for the first time. The company said the fourth flight of its SpaceShipTwo passenger &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5421,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5420\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}