Virgin Galactic Launches First Commercial Spaceflight with $450K Tickets

Virgin Galactic, part of Richard Branson's Virgin Group, is set to launch its first-ever commercial spaceflight later this month, with a $450,000 ticket price. The debut mission, "Galactic 01," will carry three crew members from the Italian Air Force and the National Research Council of Italy to conduct microgravity research. Passengers will be sent 300,000 feet above Earth's surface via a carrier plane and a six-passenger, two-pilot SpaceShipTwo space plane called VSS Unity. The spacecraft will then glide back to the planet for an unpowered runway landing.