Branson offers ultimate enlightenment from Kiruna
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Fancy a trip into the northern lights? For anybody with a spare £100,000 knocking about, this could be the ultimate enlightenment, as James Randerson reports in The Guardian.
Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic plans to offer commercial space flights from its base in New Mexico from 2010 and will begin operating from Kiruna in northern Sweden some time after that.
Sweden offers one important advantage over the US, though. Passengers paying $200,000 (about £100,000) a ticket for the two-hour flight will be able to fly into the aurora borealis – the northern lights – something that no human has done before.
January 3rd, 2008 at 10:51 pm
Anyone know how a rocket would react to whatever is going on inside the aurora borealis?
January 13th, 2008 at 6:44 pm
There should not be any reaction, the aurora borealis are nothing more than an atmospheric (or magnetospheric) collision between earth generated dust particles and charged electrons and protons arriving into our atmosphere via solar winds generated by the sun. The collisions in the upper atmosphere (altitude of 80 km) electrically excite atoms and molecules in the upper atmosphere causing the effect, it is because of the strong magnetic fields in the south and north poles that this is particularly visible. Whilst visually spectacular the processes happen at such a small scale I doubt it would effect the workings of a space craft…
January 30th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
If a rocket went into the aurora borealis it would instantly explode causing a massive chain reaction that would eventually destroy the world.
February 1st, 2008 at 9:29 am
and both of these answers are why I love the internet.
June 22nd, 2011 at 5:32 pm
Kiruna is a great place, have been there a winter and it was awesome with all the aurora borealis, wish i can go there again… until that time i will chatt with my kiruna friends… chatt