Virgin Galactic reveals initial vehicle design for high speed travel

virgin.com

13 points·punnerud··7 comments

Mission Concept Review is a milestone in NASA's Program/Project Lifecycle: https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/nasa_sy....

It sits between the "Concept Studies" and "Concept and Technology Development" phases.

Interesting they are going for this approach rather than the parabolic near space technique of spaceX. Could these just be different market segments?

Am I the only one who takes great pleasure in traveling (relatively) slow? (hyperbole)

Give me a train over a plane any day.

I don't want to seem old fashioned but I think there's great value in seeing the world go by at a speed you can actually relate to; where the things you pass still look the same as if you walked by them. I see it as an extremely value for money sight seeing tour.

Of course, like most things, it's entirely contextual. I agree with you, there's nothing I enjoy more than just looking out the window of a car, or train, or plane for that matter -- and if there isn't an urgency, or I'm traveling for pleasure that's just fine!

Of course if I need to cross a portion of the globe as quickly as possible for any number of plausible reasons, or I have to cover an enormous distance on a regular basis, like I'm sure most people would agree, (and I'm sure for a stiff price) I'd certainly be glad to have the opportunity to take advantage of a hyperspeed way to do it.

You need to give people more time off for that. Not happening in the US any time soon, we're going the other direction.

This is great! Let's see a new race between Boom and Virgin for a new generation of fast planes.

For some quick stats vs Boom: Virgin looks like mach 3, 19 seats. Boom looks like mac 2.2, 55 seats. https://boomsupersonic.com/overture

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