British billionaire Richard Branson gathered into space with children

The British billionaire Richard Branson said on Wednesday in Farnborough that the first passengers of the SpaceShiptwo rocket plane he himself, his son Sam and daughter Holly.

The flight should take place at the end of 2013. Following them, hundreds of tourists should go abroad, some of which have already purchased tickets, Cosmonautics News report.

SpaceShiptwo (SS2) is a private piloted suborbital spaceship of reusable use. Designed by SCALED Composites LLC (USA), since 1982, which has been engaged in the production of experimental aircraft.

Soborbital space flight is characterized by a speed of a smaller first cosmic one, that is, insufficient to withdraw an artificial Earth satellite to the orbit and flight along a closed trajectory.

The maximum flight height of the SS2 is 135-140 km according to the BBC information or 160-320 km according to an interview with a loud rutan, which will increase the zero gravity to 6 minutes.

According to the classification of the International Federation of Aeronautics (FAI), a flight is considered space, the height of which exceeds 100 km (above the so -called pocket line).

The maximum overload during the flight of the device will be up to 6 g. It is planned to start all flights and end at the airfield in Mohava (California). The initial expected ticket price is $ 200 thousand. The first test flight took place in March 2010.

Aviation designer Burt Rutan and his partner Richard Branson, who founded the Space Galactic space-tourist enterprise, are going to participate in the first flight of Spaceshiptwo.

At the same time, there are critics of the very idea of ​​suborbital tourist flights. For example, the USSR Cosmonaut Georgy Grechko, who made three flights into space, says that he would not pay for the suborbital flight that some American private companies offer. It would only fly if they paid to him, because the initial period of being in zero gravity is very uncomfortable.