Their flights routinely last for months as they send astronauts to the International Space Station and back. Related: The Amazing Technology That Took Us to the Moon in the 1960sĪgain, SpaceX is in a league of its own. Virgin Galactic fares slightly better, with the longest flight duration of 2.5 hours from launch to return, although the flight spends only about 15 minutes in space. Their longest flight time is 10 minutes, from launch to landing back on Earth. Duration of Flightīlue Origin is the small kid on the block here. In deep space, they have achieved outstanding hypersonic speeds of 24,600 mph at a maximum altitude of hundreds of kilometers above Earth. On the other hand, Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity has reached a top speed of 2,300 mph and a maximum height of 53.5 miles above the Earth. Speedīlue Origin's New Shephard rocket has reached a top velocity of 2,234 mph and a maximum altitude of 66 miles (106 km). The pilots manually operate it to fly into space, glide it back to Earth and land it on a runway like an ordinary airplane. The Virgin Galactic spaceplane has no automation whatsoever. These are the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, the Dragon capsule for carrying humans on flights to the International Space Station and flights around the Earth, and the Starship, which can carry both crew and cargo to Earth's orbit, the Moon, and eventually Mars. It has four different vehicles for shipping humans and payloads to space. Once again, SpaceX is way ahead of its rivals. Related: Are There Cyberattacks in Space? Vehicle Type However, there's a loophole that gets them off the hook: the United States uses 50 miles as the point where space begins. So, according to this standard, Virgin Galactic has not been to space. The internationally recognized boundary of space is 62 miles, known as the Kármán line. Virgin Galactic is the last of the three, with an altitude of 53.5 miles. SpaceX plans to send humans to Mars by 2025.īlue Origin comes in at second, having reached 66.5 miles on the Jeff Bezos flight. It is also the farthest any human has been away from Earth since NASA's Apollo moon program ended in 1972. This is higher than the International Space Station or Hubble Space Telescope. SpaceX is way ahead of the others, having launched human beings up to an altitude of 363 miles (585 km). When it comes to space, the most crucial milestone is, how high have you gone? There's no contest here.
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