Virgin Galactic has flown its first private tourists to the edge of space in a trip that included awesome views of Earth and a short period of weightlessness.
Virgin Galactic has successfully completed its first tourism ride to the edge of space.
The carrier mothership VMS Eve took off from Spaceport America in New Mexico at 08:30 a.m. local time on Thursday, carrying the rocket-powered VSS Unity aircraft.
On board Unity were 80-year-old Jon Goodwin, a former Olympic athlete from the U.K. who bought his ticket for $250,000 in 2005, when Virgin Galactic was still in the early stages of developing the ride. Since then, Goodwin has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s, though he said before the flight that he was “determined not to let it stand in the way of living life to the fullest.”
Also on board were Antiguan Keisha Schahaff, who won a pair of tickets in a raffle organized by Virgin Galactic. As her companion for the experience of a lifetime, Schahaff picked her daughter Anastatia Mayers, a philosophy and physics student in Scotland.
