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Virgin Galactic is unveiling SpaceShipTwo
- stuxnet79 11y agoCan someone give me a cliffsnotes summary of Virgin Galactic's MO vs say, SpaceX. What are both companies trying to accomplish?
- avmich 11y agoAccess to space. There could be different things to do in space, so offerings differ. SpaceX offers you the "orbital" space - you can put your payload on orbit and it's going to sit there for a long time, while doing research, serving communications, observing Earth - or even leave for another planet altogether. Virgin Galactic hopes to offer you the "suborbital" space - a short (ten minutes or so) rides to heights of about 100 km, with some 4 minutes of weightlessness included - for a lot smaller price than SpaceX. So, you can have different accesses to space. Space have different places (and, in case of suborbital flight, speeds) - and the costs to get there are different.