With the privatisation of space travel, it was perhaps inevitable that spaceship design would move from being utilitarian to being sleek and sexy, touted by the eccentric billionaires who head these ambitious new startups of the final frontier.
First came SpaceX’s stainless steel Starship, and now, Virgin Galactic has released the design of its first ship of the Spaceship III class, the VSS Imagine. The ship is set to commence ground testing with glide flights in the summer.
Its reflective design allows it to mirror the “surrounding environment as it movse from Earth to Space”, the company said.
“The breakthrough livery design, finished entirely with a mirror-like material, reflects the surrounding environment, constantly changing color and appearance as it travels from earth to sky to space. Along with providing thermal protection, this dynamic material is naturally appealing to the human eye, reflecting our inherent human fascination with space and the transformative experience of spaceflight.”
“Leveraging a modular design, the SpaceShip III class of vehicles are built to enable improved performance in terms of maintenance access and flight rate. This third generation of spaceship will lay the foundation for the design and manufacture of future vehicles.”
“As VSS Imagine begins ground testing, manufacturing will progress on VSS Inspire, the second SpaceShip III vehicle within the Virgin Galactic fleet. The introduction of the Spaceship III class of vehicles is an important milestone in Virgin Galactic’s multi-year effort that targets flying 400 flights per year, per spaceport,” the company said.
This is Virgin Galactic’s third spaceship after the VSS Enterprise (which was destroyed in a test flight accident in 2014) and the VSS Unity.
Virgin Galactic CEO Micharl Colglazier told CNBC the company needs “many more” ships that what they have now and that they need to reduce their maintenance turnaround times between flights. Based on this, the VSS Imagine was “designed in a way that’s taken the learnings we’ve had from all the flight testing on Unity”. This was done by taking a modular approach to the spacecraft.
This summer, founder Richard Branson is expected to sit onboard a flight test to space.
