Meet VSS Unity, Virgin Galactic’s new all-composite SpaceShipTwo

Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic unveiled its newly completed all-carbon composite SpaceShipTwo rocket plane. This is the latest version of the rocket plane since the fatal crash of the first SpaceShipTwo on Oct. 31, 2014. Famed professor Stephen Hawking named the new vehicle Virgin Spaceship (VSS) Unity via a recorded speech and said, “I would be very proud to fly on this spaceship.”                

The new SpaceShipTwo is the first vehicle to be manufactured by The Spaceship Co., Virgin Galactic's wholly owned manufacturing arm, and is the second vehicle of its design ever constructed. VSS Unity was unveiled in Mojave at FAITH (Final Assembly Integration Test Hangar), the home of manufacturing and testing for Virgin Galactic’s human space flight program.

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In a blog post article, Virgin Galactic emphasized its “rigorous” test campaign:

Even before we unveil this brand new vehicle—indeed, even before we’d assembled the parts together into something that looked like a spaceship—we had begun a rigorous test campaign patterned off the relevant industry standards. Starting at the level of individual pieces and components, we poked, prodded, stretched, squeezed, bent and twisted everything used to build these vehicles. We’ve run a spaceship cabin through thousands of pressure cycles simulating the flight from ground level to space and back; we’ve conducted nearly one hundred full-scale tests of our rocket motor system; we’ve bent and torqued our megastructures in ways significantly exceeding what they’d see in flight.

This type of testing isn’t complete yet—because it will never be complete. As a manufacturing organization, we will always do this sort of testing on parts. But we are now entering a phase where instead of just testing pieces and subsystems, we test the vehicle as a whole.

Here’s a video showcasing the testing process:

With VSS Unity now fully manufactured and unveiled, The Spaceship Co. will undertake integrated systems verification, followed by ground and flight tests in Mojave and ground and air exercises at its future home in Spaceport America, New Mexico. The Spaceship Co. has already started work on the next SpaceShipTwo.

Based on the smaller 2004 X-PRIZE winning SpaceShipOne designed by Burt Rutan, SpaceShipTwo is designed to take a crew of two pilots and up to six passengers to space. Virgin Galactic’s space flight experience features an air launch followed by a rocket-powered ascent at three and a half times the speed of sound, the silence of space, several minutes of out-of-seat weightlessness and multiple windowed views of our home planet.

Virgin Galactic’s budding commercial spaceline fleet now consists of the spaceship VSS Unity and two dedicated carrier aircraft—the WhiteKnightTwo VMS Eve for human spaceflight and the 747-400 Cosmic Girl for the LauncherOne small satellite launch service.

Virgin Group founder Richard Branson said, “Together, we can make space accessible in a way that has only been dreamt of before now, and by doing so can bring positive change to life on Earth. Our beautiful new spaceship, VSS Unity, is the embodiment of that goal and will provide us with an unprecedented body of experience which will in turn lay the foundations for Virgin Galactic’s future. Her creation is also great testament to what can be achieved when true teamwork, great skill and deep pride are combined with a common purpose.”