Virgin Galactic

Adventure Travel has it's very own 'Buzz Lightyear' in the form of Christchurch co-owner/operator Ian Collier.

"Hi, I've been involved in Space Tourism since 1997, and in that time, I've experienced some serious highlights. These have included a two hour cosmonaut training 'zero gravity' parabolic flight aboard an Ilyushin-76 in the skies over Moscow, accompanying clients to a former top-secret Russian airfield to watch them fly in a MiG-25 jet to the 'Edge of Space' and travelling to Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazhakstan to witness (from just a few hundred metres away) the world's second space tourist blast off to the International Space Station.

I'm thrilled and very proud that Adventure Travel are the Accredited Space Agents for Virgin Galactic in Wellington and Canterbury & Westland. It's been very exciting to watch the Virgin Galactic Project evolve, and we're now seeing great progress with the flight testing of both White Knight Two and Space Ship Two. It's incredible to think that Space Ship Two will carry our clients, among the first New Zealanders to go to Space."

Richard Branson, Chairman of the Virgin Group, said: 
“It’s very exciting; it makes space travel immediately more accessible for Kiwis, who will now be able to simply contact their local Accredited Space Agent to purchase a Virgin Galactic ticket into space.   They may even find themselves being flown into space by Virgin Blue or Virgin Atlantic pilots, who are currently training to fly the Virgin Galactic spacecraft."

Virgin Galactic is a company established by Richard Branson’s Virgin Group to undertake the challenge of developing space tourism for everybody. It will own and operate privately built spaceships, modeled on the history-making SpaceShipOne craft. These spaceships will allow private sub-orbital space tourism for the first time in our history. Virgin Galactic will run as a business with the primary purpose of making space travel more and more affordable to people throughout the world. They will reinvest funds made over the first few years back into the business, striving constantly to lower prices.

The Experience: After three days of training, passengers will board the spaceship attached to a purpose-built carrier aircraft, which will take one hour to climb to 50,000 feet where it will be close to the edges of the Earth’s atmosphere.
From here the spaceship will be released from the carrier aircraft and climb vertically, reaching the speed of sound in less than 10 seconds and three times the speed of sound in under 30 seconds.

Travelling at around 2,500 miles an hour, the astronauts will be pushed back into their seats by the acceleration G-forces as they head for a maximum altitude of more than 360,000 feet above the earth’s surface.

At the point the rocket motor cuts out, the astronauts will experience the silence of space and magical feeling of weightlessness. They will be able to see the curvature of the Earth and for 1,000 miles in any direction. They will also see the atmosphere protecting the Earth. They will experience around four minutes of weightlessness before the spacecraft returns to Earth, passing back through the atmosphere.

The trip into space and back is expected to last around two and a half hours.