Aabar Investments have revealed their partnership with Virgin Galactic to fly from Abu Dhabi to Los Angeles in a mere two hours. Aabar currently has 32% stake at Sir Richard Bronson’s space project, which aims to take civilians into outer space by 2011 and charging each passenger a good $200,000 (roundtrip of course).
This ambitious idea to fly from the Middle East to the West Coast is such a dramatically short period of time seems like a great PR stunt to build awareness for Virgin Galactic and also re-enforce the UAE’s position as the innovations hub in the Middle East. The exact date of the flight has not been announced as of yet.
[via Arabian Business]
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Holy cool.
December 15th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
Wow. Is there another source to verify this? If this is true…this is perhaps one of the most genius business ideas ever dreamt up. If the speed of the liner in upper atmosphere is enough to transport someone around the world at that speed, there will undoubtedly be demand. Not only for commercial travel but government and military as well.
My only question is…how will it reach that far at Mach 3, if unustained?
“The spacecraft will reach around Mach 3 (1000 m/s), which is faster than current fighter jets are capable of attaining; however, the spacecraft will not be able to sustain that speed for long periods of time.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Galactic
December 15th, 2009 at 7:24 pm
sounds good if successfull !
December 16th, 2009 at 8:18 pm
Do your sums folks, this is impossible even at Mach 3.
Distance very approximately 10,000 miles from Mojave to Abu Dhabi. Mach 3 appox 2,100 mph would take roughly five hours.
But they would never make it there because on re-entry SS2 would look like an incoming ICBM and would be taken out by Israeli missile defense ;-)
December 22nd, 2009 at 8:17 pm