{"id":2582,"date":"2021-07-13T23:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-07-13T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/?p=2582"},"modified":"2021-09-06T01:33:06","modified_gmt":"2021-09-06T01:33:06","slug":"virgin-galactics-first-fully-crewed-flight-and-the-boundary-of-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/virgin-galactics-first-fully-crewed-flight-and-the-boundary-of-space\/","title":{"rendered":"Virgin Galactic\u2019s First Fully-Crewed Flight and the Boundary of Space"},"content":{"rendered":"\n[06\/09\/2021 UPDATE: The BBC<\/a> reports that Virgin Galactic has been grounded by the US Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) over reports from The New Yorker<\/a><\/em> that SpaceShipTwo veered off course, and outside the flight area agreed upon with authorities, during its ascent.]\n\n\n\n

It appears that we might just be that much closer to commercial space flights; in a landmark first for Richard Branson\u2019s Virgin Galactic, the company successfully launched\u2014and landed\u2014their first fully-crewed test flight of their VSS Unity<\/em> spaceplane, of the SpaceShipTwo<\/em>-class, from the company\u2019s Spaceport America facility in the Jornada del Muerto desert basin, New Mexico. The crew consisted of Virgin Galactic\u2019s chief astronaut instructor Beth Moses, lead operations engineer Colin Bennett, vice-president of government affairs and research operations Sirisha Bandla, pilots Dave Mackay and Mike Masucci, and the company\u2019s founder (as well as of its parent company, the Virgin Group), Richard Branson. Designated mission Unity 22<\/em>, the spaceplane took off on July 11, 2021 hitchhiking on the bigger launch plane VMS Eve<\/em>, a WhiteKnightTwo-class plane, at around 8:40 a.m. local time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Flight Plan<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

After climbing to an altitude of 50,000 feet (around 15,000 meters), VMS Eve<\/em> let go of the spaceplane, after which it shot up to 53 miles (around 85 kilometers) above Earth\u2019s surface using its rocket boosters. Upon reaching the apex of its flight, the spaceplane adjusted its trajectory to allow its passengers to experience weightlessness before safely landing back on Spaceport America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pair of VSS Unity<\/em> and VMS Eve<\/em> was built by aerospace company Scaled Composites<\/em>, with the two crafts being part of the same successor project to the SpaceShipOne<\/em>, a collaboration between Scaled Composites and late Microsoft<\/em> co-founder Paul Allen. (The two were also involved with Stratolaunch<\/em>, the largest plane ever flown by wingspan and a later collaboration between the two that made news a few months prior for completing its second test flight<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the apex of the spaceplane\u2019s flight trajectory going as high as 53 miles (around 85 kilometers), the crew flew above the 50-mile (80-kilometer) altitude \u201cline\u201d designated by U.S. institutions like the military, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as the boundary of space, granting all flight crew members the title of \u201castronaut\u201d upon their arrival back on the surface.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The successful flight of VSS Unity<\/em> marks a signifier for the promising future of commercial space travel and space tourism, as this was the original purpose for the project. It also marks a significant victory for the company, which had suffered significant failures and losses beforehand; the company\u2019s first SpaceShipTwo-class spaceplane, the VSS Enterprise<\/em>, suffered a catastrophic failure and broke apart during a powered test flight just seven years prior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Houston, We Have a Problem<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It appears that not all parties are fully-accepting of the promising results displayed by Virgin Galactic, however; Amazon\u2019s aerospace branch Blue Origin, both founded by Jeff Bezos, decries its rival company\u2019s achievement, noting that while the 50-mile (80-kilometer) boundary line is recognized by entities like NASA, it still lies below the K\u00e1rm\u00e1n line<\/em>, a boundary arbitrarily set at around 62 miles (100 kilometers) above the surface of the Earth and is recognized by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). (Blue Origin will launch its own test flight<\/a>, the New Shepard<\/em>, a few days later on July 20; New Shepard<\/em> is set to pass the K\u00e1rm\u00e1n line<\/em>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The K\u00e1rm\u00e1n line<\/em>, named after the Hungarian-American engineer and physicist Theodore von K\u00e1rm\u00e1n that designated it, was actually set at around 275,000 feet (84 kilometers), which von K\u00e1rm\u00e1n denotes as the altitude above which the atmosphere becomes too thin to support aeronautical flight. The name nowadays is just attached to arbitrary boundaries selected by various institutions as the altitude that sits at the boundary of Earth\u2019s atmosphere and space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, Where Is the Edge of Space?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As it turns out, there is no clear-cut definition of the boundary of space and Earth\u2019s atmosphere yet; countries like the United States of America have resisted defining the said boundary, implying the challenges to be encountered upon doing so. The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) defines space as \u201cfree for exploration and use by all,\u201d, while the same cannot be said for sovereign air space; defining the boundary between the two means defining the boundary between space laws and aeronautical laws, and whether spacefaring craft fall beneath one or the other. The lines become even more blurred once you consider the differences between laws governing government-sanctioned space flights and space tourism, which now appears to be under rapid development due to companies like Virgin Galactic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other parties are also concerned with haphazardly giving away the title of \u201castronaut\u201d to what would otherwise be considered \u201cspace tourists;\u201d the U.S. military, for instance, awards the United States Astronaut Badge<\/em>, nicknamed \u201castronaut wings,\u201d to individuals who have completed both astronaut training and a successful spaceflight. As Virgin Galactic is a commercial company, they cannot award these very same badges; to compensate, they developed their own \u201castronaut wing\u201d badges\u2014complete with a tiny SpaceShipTwo<\/em>\u2014and awarded them to all members of the VSS Unity<\/em> flight crew, including Branson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bibliography<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n