The idea of outer space will forever be far from human understanding yet the physicality of reaching the other side of Earth’s atmosphere (orbit) only takes a matter of minutes in the eye of new technology. In a question and answer session hosted by NASA, launch director, Mike Leinbach explains it ‘takes the shuttle approximately 8-1/2 minutes to get to orbit. And if you think about it, we’re accelerating a 4-1/2 million pound system from zero miles per hour to its orbital velocity of 17,500 miles per hour in those 8-1/2 minutes. So it’s a heck of a ride for the astronauts. They typically experience about three times the force of gravity during most of the ascent, and once we reach orbit when the main engines cut off, they go from that three-G acceleration to zero acceleration virtually instantaneously, and that’s when they become weightless on orbit.’. We are actually quite close you could just visit for a day trip. This concept is quite humorous to me, though it is not so much for companies who see the fast round trip as a profiteering concept namely, Virgin Galactic. Owned by infamous commercial aeroplane and media company, Virgin- they recognise that the answers to many of the challenges we face in sustaining life on our beautiful planet lie in making better use of space. Virgin Galactic is a spaceflight company which has already begin developing commercial spacecraft and aims to provide suborbital spaceflights to space tourists and suborbital launches for space science missions. In other words, this ordeal will force us to comprehend the undeniable discomfort of space.
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