First craft lands at Spaceport America (Exclusive Video)

The future of travel is one step closer to taking off. Last Friday, Spaceport America officially dedicated its recently completed tarmac by welcoming two craft to land in front of a large crowd of Spaceport officials, future astronauts, and press.

Gadling was on-site to witness history as Virgin Galactic's spaceship VSS Enterprise, carried by mothership White Knight II, made a dramatic flyover and landed on the enormous 200 ft wide by 10,000 foot long runway.

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• Virgin Galactic
• Spaceport America
• Richard Branson
• Bill Richardson
• New Mexico

[seaglass39]

This has been done before 50 years ago with the X-15...This is nothing but a circus ride...a really cool circus ride but a ride nonetheless. The real "Space" advances are happening at SpaceX...google it...

[spgreenwood]

@seaglass39 Valid point, but this is just where it starts. Once this operation is a viable business, the scale & length of the trips will increase, and it won't be long before people are going on orbital and intercontinental flights.

SpaceX is doing great things, but they just don't have the ability to market a consumer product to an audience as wide as Virgin can. Virgin is really one of the only companies that can make this a reality right now.

[punko]

Really cool stuff!

What camera did you guys used to record this? the quality is amazing!

[spgreenwood]

@punko Thanks - most of it was shot on the 5D, with the slow motion stuff at 60fps on the 7D.

[angusargentina]

un argentino dirigió la construcción de esto!!! de Mendoza.

[janjuliusalbert]

This has nothing to do with a vision at all, just marketing.

It will NEVER work, he's only collecting BIG money . 100 idiots payed 200.000 dollars for their "space ticket" ( what a laugh!), this is 20.000.000 $ in his pocket minus investment..

Branson sells everything but real space flights.

[eyebo]

Nice coverage. Thanks for sharing.

[whemadre]

Good job! I hope this all transcends into the real thing. But the way the rich are squeezing the middle class down to the lower class, this will only ever be a rich man's toy. Unless you want to be a rich man's toy (Barbarella).

[seaglass39]

You're right in many ways. Unfortunately I can't see the physics working for anything but sub orbital hops (maybe across the oceans? Maybe.) unless someone comes up with a new way to burn fuel. You can throw all of the money you want at this problem (NASA did) but I think consumer space flight will still be a very rare thing years from now. Speeding the process up would take a huge technological leap ahead or the Chinese setting up a manned station on the moon...

[thew0rldofscience]

Truly awesome. Great achievement for mankind indeed!