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Saturday, May 22, 2021
THE HAPPENING WORLD: Virgin Galactic Completes Suborbital “Space” Flight from New Mexico
Sending our heartfelt congratulations to our cousins @virgingalactic on an excellent test flight today, which carried two astronaut pilots to space and safely back! An exciting moment for the Virgin family, the people of New Mexico, and space fans everywhere https://t.co/GqAyb5tHmk
— Virgin Orbit (@VirginOrbit) May 22, 2021
Virgin Galactic uses a definition of “space” of 50 miles (80.5 km) or above which is only used by the U.S. Air Force, NASA, and some other U.S. government agencies. The rest of the world and most aerospace engineers define space as above the Kármán line (100 km or 62 miles). Virgin Galactic's “space” plane cannot reach this altitude, so they adopted a definition within the capability of their vehicle.
I suggest we call the people who fly to “space” on Virgin's ship “asterisknauts”.
Posted at May 22, 2021 19:12