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Sci-Tech

Virgin Galactic Completes New Spaceship Manufacturing Facility

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Orange County, Calif. – Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: SPCE) (“Virgin Galactic” or the “Company”) recently announced the completion of its new manufacturing facility in Mesa, Arizona (Greater Phoenix area), where final assembly of its next-generation Delta spaceships is scheduled to take place starting in Q1 2025.

An initial team of Virgin Galactic technical operations and manufacturing personnel has begun preparing the facility to receive and install tooling, expected to arrive in Q4 2024. The facility will then begin to receive major subassemblies, including the wing, the fuselage, and the feathering system next year, as the team scales to build the first two ships of the Delta fleet. Once ground testing is complete, Virgin Galactic’s mothership will ferry completed spaceships to Spaceport America, New Mexico for flight test ahead of commercial operations, which are expected to begin in 2026.

The multiuse facility includes two hangars equipped with multiple bays, designed for maximum flexibility in building and testing space vehicles.

Work at the facility will be supported by the Company’s digital twin technology, which enables seamless integration between Virgin Galactic and suppliers through real-time collaboration, promoting strong governance and increased efficiency and reliability.

In May 2024, Virgin Galactic opened a ground testing facility in Southern California for Delta subsystems, including avionics, feather actuation, pneumatics, and hydraulics, using an Iron Bird test rig.

Design concept- Virgin Galactic’s MACH 3 Supersonic commercial passenger jet – a partnership with Rolls Royce (Concorde engines) could mean this design stands a real chance of being produced as well in the future.

Virgin Galactic’s Delta spaceships will seat up to six private passengers, and each is expected to be capable of flying up to eight missions per month, dramatically increasing access to space.

“The completion of our new manufacturing facility is an important milestone in the development of our fleet of next-generation spaceships, the key to our scale and profitability. Tooling will begin arriving in a matter of months to support spaceship final assembly, which we expect to commence in Q1 2025.”

Michael Colglazier • CEO of Virgin Galactic

Sci-Tech

Canada Space Agency -How Space Affects Our Body

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Living in space has significant effects on the human body. As we prepare for journeys to more distant destinations like Mars, humankind must tackle these risks to ensure safe travel for our astronauts.

Have a look at this nifty infographic from the CSA.

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Canada Space Agency PSA space info

Travel

Marriage Proposals While Orbiting Moon By 2022

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Starting in 2022 it will be possible to ask for the beloved’s hand in marriage while flying over the lunar surface to the sound of Frank Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon”. The one-week interplanetary flight will be carried out using a self-contained and autonomous spacecraft allowing the two lovers to travel alone.

The ApoteoSurprise agency, a French marriage proposal planner specialized in creating extravagant proposals, introduces a whole new service for 145 million dollars which will allow 21st century handsome princes to propose while flying around the Moon. Reaching for the Moon in the name of love is about to become a reality, the ultimate goal of the Paris-based agency being to “stage the craziest and most outstanding marriage proposal of the last 13.8 billion years“.

Apoteo Marriage Proposals France

From March 2022, elite lovers will be able to book the all-included service on the site www.proposeinparis.com and five months later find themselves enjoying the following program:
– Twelve weeks of pre-requisite technical and physical training.
– Takeoff on D-Day from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
– Richard Strauss’s “Thus spoke Zarathustra, Op.30” (Theme from 2001 Space Odyssey) resounding in the two space tourists’ helmets when the first effects of weightlessness are felt.
– Arrival in lunar orbit, three days later, flying over the satellite’s grayish surface at only 200/300 kilometers altitude.

Earthrise Apollo 8
The famous ‘Earthrise’ photo from Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the moon. The crew entered lunar orbit on Christmas Eve, Dec. 24, 1968. That evening, the astronauts held a live broadcast, showing pictures of the Earth and moon as seen from their spacecraft. photo:NASA

– Cut-off of all communication with Earth for around thirty minutes while the capsule flies over the dark side of the Moon.
– The Frank Sinatra song “Fly Me to the Moon” played halfway through the orbital flight, allowing the suitor to make his marriage proposal far from any form of human life (engagement ring secretly hidden in his spacesuit).
– A spectacular Earth-rise seen from behind the lunar craters and return trip of nearly four days before atmospheric re-entry and final touchdown.

The flight-plan followed by the space capsule will mirror that of the mythical Apollo 8 mission in 1968. The spacecraft, traveling at a speed of up to 38,000 km/h, will be equipped with eight cameras allowing the couple to immortalize their entry into the history of the conquest of space and the conquest… of love! For the Silo, Nicolas Garreau.