Presentation: September 2021

This month's AE presenter: Jeff
Date of presentation: 27 Sept 2021
Subject: Private Spaceflight
Description: For this month's ordeal, Jeff talked briefly about the history of private (non-national) spaceflight, starting as early as 1929 with the Opel RAK rocket plane and continuing to the present with the recent well-covered missions by Virgin Galactic (Richard Branson), Blue Origin (Jeff Bezos), and SpaceX that made some of their earliest crewed flights in July and September of this year.  Virgin Galactic has plans to offer rides to the public (only $450K!) as early as 2022.

Aerospace Minute by David

On 14 March, David talked about the new Virgin Galactic spacecraft, the Unity.  This spacecraft replaces the spacecraft that crashed in 2014. The spacecraft's wings are hinged to rotate into a feathered position. This allows the wings to create drag and prevent high heat on re-entry, yet not produce lift until it is needed. In 2014, the wings came unlocked, causing the fatal crash. The hinge mechanism has now been redesigned, and the new spacecraft is ready for testing. The spacecraft it piloted manually vs. through automation for simplicity and reliability. Tickets will cost approximately $250K for a flight. No word yet on the a date for the first flight.  Source for this AE Minute came from CNN  news.