Virgin Galactic to build a system to launch satellites in Long Beach Airport

Virgin Galactic, one of the private companies working on the flight into space, заключила deal with the Long Beach airport . The company plans to expand production at the airport of your system to launch satellites LauncherOne. 16,000 sq.m. production facilities will be located on the site previously owned company Boing.

The system will be a two-stage LauncherOne and instead launch missiles from launch pad satellites (and in the future space tourists) will be put into orbit a rocket launched from the aircraft WhiteKnightTwo . As conceived by the founders, the plane rises from the runway, reaches a height of 15 km, after which it starts rocket has already reached orbit of 100 km. Load capacity of about 250 kg.

The system already has the first customer. The company plans to organize OneWeb ubiquitous and affordable satellite Internet, and run for this purpose on the Earth's orbit 648 satellites. The head of Virgin, billionaire Richard Branson announced the impending deal last month.

Branson says that his system will be more convenient for launching satellites into the desired orbit, because it is not tied to a particular place start. In addition, it should allow to place in orbit satellites are not a couple of times a month as their competitor SpaceX, and every three to four hours.

Source: geektimes.ru/post/245864/