Richard Branson‘s space tourism company is doing something NASA has struggled with for a long time — making a rocket ship actually look cool … because, hey, optics are important.
Virgin Galactic just unveiled its latest spaceship … the beginning of what they’re calling a new series of spacecraft vehicles that are supposed to be revolutionary. This model’s been dubbed VSS Imagine … and it’s been designed to lead the pack in the company’s fleet.
What’s different about this rocket — the third such spacecraft Virgin has made thus far — is that it’s supposedly quicker to assemble, and quicker to do maintenance on … so they can get more of them up in the air in an efficient manner.
Virgin says it can’t produce VSS Imagine on an assembly line quite yet, but based on this prototype … they can start cranking out a lot of them sooner, which will advance their plans to shoot paying customers off into space.
Virgin hopes Imagine follows in the successful path of its VSS Unity ship which has completed a couple spaceflights in recent years … with a 3rd expected in May.
All of Virgin’s spaceships have looked pretty sleek in appearance — but VSS Imagine tops them all with an out-of-this-world design that looks like it’s straight out of “The Jetsons.”
Compare that to rocket ships that have been part of NASA’s Space Shuttle program for the last 30 odd years … and you can immediately see the difference. The Space Shuttle ships have been bulky and a bit of an eyesore through the years, and haven’t changed a whole lot in terms of design, externally, anyway.
Granted, NASA is the OG of space travel in this country — and they’ve had a lot of historical success. Still, they should upgrade their look if they wanna capture the youth’s imagination again.
With Branson, Bezos and Elon Musk in the game … the competition is fierce!