Behold: VSS Unity, the spacecraft Virgin Galactic says will open up space to the rest of us. (credit: Virgin Galactic)
It’s been 16 months since SpaceShipTwo crashed into the Mojave Desert and killed the vehicle’s co-pilot Michael Alsbury. On Friday, Virgin Galactic sought to move on from that accident and put the company firmly back on a path toward delivering tourists to the edge of space by unveiling a new version of its spacecraft named VSS Unity.
“I’m really proud of the entire team,” said George Whitesides, chief executive of Virgin Galactic, in an interview with Ars. “It’s a bunch of folks who came to this company to open space up, and they’re not going to be deterred by the accident. They’ve been working really hard for a year and a half to finish this vehicle.”
The new spacecraft is in many ways the same as the original SpaceShipTwo, dubbed Enterprise, Whitesides said. It has the same basic airframe and propulsion systems. The biggest change is to the feather locking system, used to aid in the descent of the spacecraft. During the fatal flight on Oct. 31, 2014, Alsbury prematurely deployed the system while still making a powered ascent. Unity now includes a mechanical pin to prevent the feather lever from moving when the vehicle is flying in an unsafe flight regime.
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