Last Thursday, Virgin Galactic ran the second test of their commercial spaceplane (how I love using that word, spaceplane, without it referring to something fictional), SpaceShipTwo.Around 8am PDT, it took off attached to the WhiteNightTwo carrier and climbed 46,000 feet before being released and igniting its own rocket to ascend to 69,000 feet.
SpaceShipTwo reached a speed of mach 1.43 before descending back to the Mojave landing site at 9:25 am. The pilots, Mark Stucky and Clint Nichols, reported a "flawless flight."
Virgin Galactic has already accepted $70 million from 580 individuals for their own taste of space.
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