What an amazing sight!

[youtube]http://youtu.be/gZj7LB1ilnY[/youtube]

That chase plane is sweet!


Pretty cool to get to see that while riding along on the airlines.

That is awesome! Chase plane! I didn't see one, lol.

Wow. Very cool

Those three chase planes sure did hold a tight formation....

Wow, don't see that every day!
I wonder how Virgin Galactic requested that? And who was flying it. They have a couple of fairly famous pilots!

Taken from a Virgin America Airbus.

http://sfappeal.com/2011/04/weird-looki ... bay-today/

Happened in 2011. Branson was aboard, along with Buzz Aldrin.

Landing SFO 28L/R

[youtube]http://youtu.be/0oxgLEm4ZzA[/youtube]

Taken from a Virgin America Airbus.

http://sfappeal.com/2011/04/weird-looki ... bay-today/

Happened in 2011. Branson was aboard, along with Buzz Aldrin.

Landing SFO 28L/R

[youtube]http://youtu.be/0oxgLEm4ZzA[/youtube]

Yeah, I guess that wasn't a revenue flight.

I want to see the shots from the Baron!

http://www.icetrend.com/commercial-airl ... al-flight/

Find the Beechcraft

That was soooo 19 days ago....

:D

viewtopic.php?f=49&t=96837&hilit=white+knight

Sorry, I looked, but didn't see that post.

It's amusing that it was on BT 5 days before the article was written.

Don't sweat it. I only see about 5% of BT these days....

Very cool flight! I very much enjoyed seeing White Knight 2 at OSH a few years ago.

I've very recently re-watched the Discovery Channel DVDs of the flights that won the Ansari X-Prize. Hard to believe it was ten years ago. It is poignant to watch Rutan saying how soon they would follow up the X-Prize flights with passenger flights.

I know that Scaled is pretty tight with information, but is there a good write-up anywhere of the hard work they have been doing during the past decade to try to get it to the point where they can make revenue flights?
Jay

Here's a story from yesterday:

http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2014-0 ... elays.html

"Richard Branson said almost 800 would-be space tourists signed up for $250,000 flights with his Virgin Galactic venture have been understanding about glitches that caused commercial services to be delayed until 2015."

"Virgin Galactic won’t now make a commercial flight until early spring, with Branson and his son on the first launch, the U.K. billionaire confirmed today after revealing earlier this month that a target of commencing operations this year had become unrealistic. The resolution of issues with the spacecraft’s rockets may mean a vehicle carrying flight crew but no passengers still reaches space during 2014, he added."

Thanks Chris. I'd seen that, but hunger for more technical details. Certainly the explosion 7 years ago set them back, but I was a bit surprised to hear that they listed the rocket as one of the items that is still causing issues. They certainly had hypersonic yaw-roll coupling issues in the first X-Prize flight. Still, a decade is a long time. These are good folks, and it would be interesting to see what challenges they have overcome.
Jay