Richard branson spaceship12/4/2023 ![]() The company's next flight is scheduled for late September and will carry a group of Italian Air Force personnel. Virgin Galactic's July 11 flight carried Branson, two pilots and three company employees above the 50-mile-high altitude recognized by the FAA and NASA as the boundary between space and the discernible atmosphere. The sale marks the third time Branson has offloaded the stock of money-losing Virgin Galactic, having sold $500 million in shares in May 2020 and another $150 million in April. ![]() All told, the shares were worth about $300 million. Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson sold more than 10 million shares of his space-tourism company earlier this week, just one month after enjoying his own personal, televised suborbital rocket ride viewed by millions of people on planet Earth.īranson began selling the shares through Virgin Group Investments on Tuesday and finished the transactions late Thursday, a regulatory filing shows. "The Kármán line has become synonymous with 100 kilometers, but that wasn't originally the definition of the Kármán line," McDowell said.Richard Branson speaks after Virgin Galactic flight: "Welcome to the dawn of a new space age" 06:29 But over time, McDowell said people who worked on Kármán's research decided not to "specify it that accurately" and instead decided "just round it" to 100. His approach was also "a physics-based idea" and "was somewhere around" the mid-80 kilometer range. But whenever it dips to the mid-70s, they just burn up and can't orbit any more," McDowell said.įinally, McDowell says that Theodore von Kármán himself "didn't originally pick" 100 kilometers as the edge of space. "If you look at elliptical orbit satellites, you find that they can survive when the closest point of their orbit to the Earth is in the mid-80 kilometers. Through modeling, his research showed that the edge of the atmosphere "doesn't wave around that much" and is fairly consistent in its effect on spacecraft. On the scientific basis, McDowell gave a physics-based arguments for 80 kilometers, based on the density of the upper atmosphere. has more freedom of action if it's not defined." "Because then it becomes obvious that their missiles go through space and might potentially be subject to space law," McDowell said. has resisted there being any international agreement" on the boundary of space "because they don't want space to be too clearly defined." On the weapons side, McDowell highlighted that "the U.S. In the 1960s, the Air Force awarded pilots of its rocket-powered X-15 aircraft with astronaut wings after they flew above 80 kilometers. recognizes 80 kilometers for a couple of reasons, including space weapons regulations and the historical precedent of early military astronauts. "For 96% of the world's population, space begins 100 km up," the company said. Nevertheless, Blue Origin doubled down on its Kármán line view in a tweet on Friday. In the debate between the altitudes of 100 kilometers or 80 kilometers, McDowell emphasized that "it's actually not really right to say the rest of the world recognizes 100 kilometers." He said that aviation records keeper Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) is "the one official place" that sticks to 100 kilometers, saying again that "it's not an international law." After performing a slow backflip in microgravity, the spacecraft returns to Earth in a glide for a runway landing. Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo system is released mid-air by a carrier aircraft, before firing its rocket engine and arching up in a climb. Afterward, the capsule returns to Earth under the control of a set of parachutes, with the booster returning separately to land so it can be launched again. An orbital flight, such as with Elon Musk's SpaceX, costs tens of millions of dollars and typically spends multiple days or weeks in space.īlue Origin's New Shepard rocket launches vertically from the ground, with a capsule for six passengers that disconnects from the rocket booster near the top of the flight. First and foremost, neither Blue Origin nor Virgin Galactic fly to orbit - both spacecraft are defined as suborbital, capable of carrying passengers to the edge of space to float in microgravity for a few minutes at most. Key to understanding the dispute is the differences between the companies' spacecraft. Personal Loans for 670 Credit Score or Lower Personal Loans for 580 Credit Score or Lower ![]() Best Debt Consolidation Loans for Bad Credit
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