Virgin Galactic has offered a look inside its tourist space plane for those of us who can't afford the $250,000 ticket. The six-passenger SpaceShipTwo, a collaboration with London design agency Seymourpowell, is designed entirely around "the view of Earth from space," explains chief space officer George Whitesides. Each passenger gets their own comfy seat and circular viewing windows. Decked out in safety suits designed by Under Armour, they'll also have two of 16 cameras trained on them to capture the once-in-a-lifetime experience—to include a float in zero gravity 60 miles above Earth, per the Guardian. But passengers won't have to wait until they're back on land to see themselves in space. A large, circular mirror at the back of the cabin will "allow our customers to see themselves in space in a way that has really never been done before," Whitesides says.
SpaceShipTwo will detach from a larger carrier plane at an altitude of 45,000 feet after taking off from its New Mexico spaceport. It will then ignite its hybrid rocket motor and head to the edge of space before falling back to Earth and landing like an airplane on a runway, per the Washington Post. But the date of the first 90-minute flight—to include Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson—is still up in the air. Branson has said he hopes to take off before the end of 2020, but only glide flights have been completed so far, per the BBC. "Our next flight will be just purely two pilots in the front to do a systems check," Whitesides tells the outlet. Then "the plan is to start putting [four of our] people in the back." Some 600 people have signed up for a flight with another 400 putting down a $1,000 refundable deposit for a chance at the next round of tickets. (More Virgin Galactic stories.)
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