The collaboration between Altec and Virgin Galactic will lead to the construction of a base for suborbital travel. Veneto, Puglia or Sardinia are the probable locations
Nice Rome, Florence and Venice, but do you want to put it with a trip into space? No, it is not utopia but the near future. Within three years, in fact, will be ready the Italian “gate” for the travel of space tourists. A round-trip outside the Earth’s atmosphere with six travelers and two crew members on board.
From 2019, Italy will take tourists into space. The project is a collaboration between Altec, the Italian center of excellence for the provision of engineering and logistics services for planetary exploration based in Turin, and Virgin Galactic, the private aerospace company of the magnate Richard Branson. Experts from the two companies starting in 2017 will look for the best military airport to use as a starting and ending point for travel. The most popular regions are Veneto, Puglia or Sardinia. There is no need for a complex structure, and it will not be necessary to build a new base, but a runway of the right length will be enough.
How space travel works
(Taken from YouTube)
To take flight will be a pair of planes, the mother one the White Knight that will carry the SpaceShipTwo. The first one is used to carry travelers above 100 kilometers in height, the second one (the one where the tourists will stay) will fall back into the atmosphere in a controlled manner to bring the tourists back to the airport. This sounds like a very long term project, but the two companies intend to start the trips in two to three years. Good weather conditions will be needed to start, especially for wind. Since the return is in “glide”. There is no need to find places with low population density, indeed the companies hope for a collaboration of regional realities. In this sense the field of research for now has been restricted to Decimomannu, in the province of Cagliari, that Altec has already declared as suitable for suborbital flights.
The regulations
Among the problems to solve there are the regulations of the Italian territory. That currently do not mention this type of travel. It is probable that those indicated in the USA will be followed. In the United States, in fact, the space flights will begin in 2017 and despite the cost (250 thousand dollars) are already hundreds of reservations. Who knows, maybe in a short time Italy will become not only a conventional tourist destination, but also an excellence for space travel.