Virgin Galactic: after 18 years of waiting, Brazilian can travel to space as a tourist in 2024

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Brazilian will be the 30th passenger of Virgin Galactic, a company that started operating flights to space for tourists. Virgin Galactic made its maiden flight last week PA MEDIA After almost two decades of waiting, the executive believes that a historic moment in his life is approaching. The 67-year-old Brazilian based in London is on the list to travel as a space tourist for Virgin Galactic, a company that started offering space flights commercially. The Galactic Unity rocket will start taking the more than 800 people who have already bought tickets for space tourism, starting in August. Hartogs is in the group of “founders” — the first people who bought tickets, in 2005. There are just over 40 people who have been waiting for the opportunity to go into space for 18 years without the need for heavy training, as astronauts do. Virgin’s initial prediction was that the first flights would take place in 2008. But the project has suffered numerous setbacks over time – including an accident with a test vehicle in 2014 that killed a pilot. The costs and deadlines for the project were much higher than originally anticipated. Last week, Virgin Galactic’s Unity rocket plane finally began commercial operations. The vehicle flew over the New Mexico desert on Thursday (6/29) with three Italian researchers on board, who conducted scientific experiments in very low gravity conditions. Sheet 30 Hartogs says that over the decades, Virgin Galactic has always kept in touch on an almost weekly basis with the so-called “founders”. He has trained, traveled a few times to the Mojave Desert, in the USA, and has spoken a few times with billionaire Richard Branson — the CEO of the Virgin group and creator of commercial space flight. Now that the flights have finally started, Hartogs says he has been drawn number 30 on the list of people to go into space. Each flight carries four passengers and two pilots – and it is believed that there will be one flight per month. The Brazilian calculates that his turn to go to space will arrive between April and June 2024. From 2026, with the help of new technologies that are being developed, Virgin wants to increase the frequency of flights to once a week. Bernardo Hartogs will be Virgin Galactic’s 30th passenger PERSONAL ARCHIVE Hartogs says his enthusiasm for the prospect of traveling in the rocket has not waned over the years. “I’m going to leave our planet’s atmosphere, which must be an unimaginable feeling,” Hartogs told BBC News Brasil. The oil market executive was under 50 when he bought his ticket. He discovered the possibility of flying into space as a tourist by accident. His daughter was a childhood friend of one of the Virgin executives. One day, in a cafe, the executive told Hartogs about the company’s pioneering plans. “He said, ‘We’re planning to send people into space. And you can buy a founder’s ticket. If you pay now, you could be among the first to travel.’ He sent me a DVD, which I looked at at home. Soon after, I called him and said, ‘I’ll buy it’.” Hartogs like speed and adventure. He has a collection of vintage Formula-1 cars — Lotus-15, Lotus 18, Alfa Romeo and Ford GT 40 — and he often drives these old models at circuits like Silverstone and Monza. On the ground, these cars exceed speeds of 200 kilometers per hour – but, in the rocket, Hartogs will travel at a speed close to Mach 3, that is, more than 3 thousand kilometers per hour (or three times the speed of sound). Unity is a suborbital vehicle. This means that it cannot reach the speed and altitude necessary to stay in orbit, that is, stay in space and circle the globe. Unity is first carried by a much larger plane to an altitude of about 15 km (50,000 feet), from which the rocket launches. An engine on the back of Unity then fires. The maximum height reached by Unity is approximately 90 km (295,000 feet). Before long, gravity pulls the vehicle back to earth. But the spacecraft was designed to give passengers breathtaking views at the top of their ascent and allow them to experience weightlessness for a few minutes. Passengers can unbuckle their harness to float to a window before the plane stabilizes its fall and slides back to earth. Maturity Today at the age of 67, he says that these almost two decades of waiting only served to further mature his conviction of going to space — and also helped to convince his family members, who were initially apprehensive about the adventure. “The thought of going into space in six, seven months, that’s crazy. But [essa demora] helped better convince my family to let me go,” he says, laughing. Despite the jokes, he says his family supports his dream. “I spoke to Richard Branson when he got back from the trip he took to the space [em 2021] and he told me that this experience is something that can only be understood by traveling. It changes your whole perspective.” In 2005, when the first tickets to space were sold, it was reported that the so-called “founders” — like Bernardo Hartogs — paid $200,000. – which lasts 90 minutes – for US$ 450,000 (more than R$ 2 million). The company says that, despite the high price, the demand for space travel is high, and more than 800 people are signed up. Richard Branson is one of billionaires participating in the current commercial space race REUTERS Over the years, other companies have also entered the space tourism market, Virgin Galactic lost the race to take paying passengers to space in 2021 to Blue Origin, billionaire Jeff’s company Bezos. The American multimillionaire Dennis Tito became the first space tourist in the world paying US$ 20 million (one hundred times more than the amount paid by the “founders” of Virgin). The founder of Amazon has a system of rockets and capsules called New Shepard. It’s a different approach to Unity, but it does essentially the same job of taking people on short trips above the atmosphere. Now, Virgin Galactic’s entry into the market marks a new era in space tourism, with regular flights from more companies — in addition to Virgin and Blue Origin, Elon Musk’s Space X also operates in this market. -This entry was posted in: Virgin Galactic completes first commercial flight into space: Virgin Galactic completes first commercial flight into space

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