Ground control to SpaceShipTwo, you are cleared to launch.
Virgin Galactic (FAA) on Thursday for its first commercial space flight, set to take off by the end of the year from Spaceport America in the Jornada del Muerto desert basin of New Mexico.
The agreement licenses Galactic to operate like a commercial airline鈥攈opefully with better in-flight service鈥攂ut regular flights to space just yet. The FAA still needs to clears for standard safety and environmental checks.
In related news,聽, a manned space capsule that will shuttle astronauts between Earth and the International Space Station. The Dragon V2 is a sweet rig, even by spacecraft standards: It features Tesla S touch screens and a SuperDraco engine鈥200 times more powerful than engines currently in use. In all, it’s a $500 million upgrade from the first iteration of the Dragon capsule.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says he is fairly confident Dragon V2 will launch in two years from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center, the historic launch site of Apollo 11 in July 1969.