Now that space tourism is a thing, it’s not just pals like Neil and Buzz who go barreling out into the atmosphere together—you can be accompanied by the relative who’ll nag you about whether you packed enough clean socks for the journey. Today, Virgin Galactic is sending the first mother-daughter pair into space together on its second commercial flight.
The Galactic 02 mission—which will last about 70 minutes (just shy of a full viewing of March of the Penguins) and includes a few minutes of zero gravity—is set to leave the New Mexico desert around 11 a.m. ET. And one lucky contest winner, Keisha Schahaff, is taking her daughter Anastatia Mayers as her plus-one. They will also be the first people from the Caribbean to go to space.
Eighty-year-old Olympic canoeist Jon Goodwin will also be on the flight. He will be the first Olympian and the second person with Parkinson’s disease to go to space.
Space is a vast business: For most of us, a contest is probably the most likely way to visit the stars. Tickets on a Virgin Galactic flight have reached as much as $450,000, which is pretty cheap compared to SpaceX’s $55 million and Blue Origin’s purported $28 million ticket prices
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