Richard Branson’s space tourism company Virgin Galactic has revealed the design of the cabin and seats for its highly anticipated SpaceShipTwo VSS Unity in a live webcast on YouTube. The live unveiling along with the use of virtual reality was intended to let people ‘experience the cabin’ in the hope of ‘inspiring future astronauts’. “In just my second week as Virgin Galactic’s CEO, it is with great pride that I can lead our talented teams in revealing this latest milestone in our journey to space,” Michael Colglazier, CEO of Virgin Galactic said in a press release. “The spaceship cabin interior is in many ways the design centrepiece of the astronaut journey and what has been created will both facilitate and elevate a uniquely profound and transformational journey for the thousands who will fly.”
The cabin has a minimalistic design with white and blue as the dominant colors, inspired by the celestial spaces and oceans below. The cabin has seating for six passengers and each seat gets two personal windows for a view of the Earth below. The seats feature pilot-controlled recline mechanism that will position themselves according to the G-forces during takeoff and landing phases and move aside freeing up space for the space tourists to float through the cabin in zero gravity. In addition to that, the cabin also gets mood lighting linked to each phase of the space flight. The space flight experience of the passengers will be captured by multiple in-cabin cameras. “When we created Virgin Galactic, we started with what we believed would be optimal customer experience and then built the spaceship around it,” said Richard Branson, Founder of Virgin Group. “We will continue with that ethos as we expand our fleet, build our operations and underpin Virgin Galactic’s position as the Spaceline for Earth.” The company that was launched in 2004 already has 400 people who have made a deposit to reserve a seat as part of the One Small Step program and each ticket is rumored to cost more than $200,000.
