Gadgetory

today Virgin Galactic unveiled its new spaceship - it's the vehicle the company will use to replace the old spaceship - which crashed in 2014 during a routine test plane this vehicle is basically the same as its predecessor it's a space plane that will launch and return to Earth the same way but there are a few key changes mainly to make it safer and to prevent in-flight nerve now this vehicle is the one that Virgin Galactic will use to potentially send people into several space someday together we can make space accessible in a way there's only being dreamt of before now and by doing that we can truly bring positive change to life on Earth she assisted to fly not just once to space for perhaps thousands of times reusability is key space riders become a regular affordable activity Virgin Galactic is the space tourism venture British entrepreneur Richard Branson it's one of a handful of companies racing to offer private citizens the chance to escape Earth's atmosphere since the company was founded in 2004 hundreds of the rich and famous have paid the $250,000 price to reserve a seat including Ashton Kutcher Leonardo DiCaprio and Justin Bieber but the company has been beset with delays on Halloween in 2014 one pilot was killed and another injured during a test flight of spaceship two above the Mojave Desert an NTSB investigation found that the cause of the crash was due in part to pilot error it marked the first time someone had died during a private space flight test and the company's only vehicle at the time was completely destroyed since the accident Virgin Galactic has been working hard to build a new safer version of spaceship 2 the space plane is designed to take six passengers and two pilots in a suborbital space but rather than launching from the ground like most rockets the vehicle is lifted up to an altitude of 50,000 feet by a carrier aircraft called White Knight to their spaceship to you deploys and ignites its rocket engine for 70 seconds during a crew flight the vehicle is meant to speed up to above Mach 3 and reach a top altitude of 70 miles high this allows passengers to experience a few minutes of weightlessness and step orbit then to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere the vehicle must reposition its wings it's a manoeuvre known as feathering the pilots must pull two levers while in space and the wings move from their horizontal position to a 65 degree upright angle this helps create enough atmospheric drag to slow down the space plane during its descent the wings eventually shift back to their normal position so that spaceship too can by two arunda the feathering assistant is crucial for spaceships to safe descent but it also helped cause the 2014 crash one of the pilots unlocked the feathering system too early during flight this caused the wings to shift prematurely even though the pilots hadn't pulled any levers and the wings are only meant to shift in space after the engine is cut off and the vehicle is moving much more slowly instead the wings rotated when spaceship 2 was accelerating at transonic speeds placing too many g-forces on the vehicle and causing it to break apart one of the key differences with this new spaceship - that there are fail safes in place to prevent the pilots from unlocking the feathering system too early we've added in a mechanical system that prevents our pilots from inadvertently whether through a mistake or anything else during this very brief period of the flight where you don't want that feather to deploy it makes it so you can't deploy during that time period without making it so that during all the other places of flight when it is a safety system without making it so you have to you know click through three computer menus in order to activate something that you want to be able to activate in a hurry but whether or not these changes work remains to be seen flight testing is scheduled to take place later this year and that's when we'll really know if this is the safer vehicle than before