Virgin Galactic has made major headway on the development of SpaceShipTwo, a space vehicle the travel giant will use to take passengers on suborbital journeys around Earth’s atmosphere and back. More than 15 years after Virgin Galactic was founded by Richard Branson, the company finally reveals interiors of its hotly anticipated spacecraft VSS Unity. The company tapped London design studio Seymourpowell, which has experience designing private jet interiors but “purposely didn’t look to aviation or automotive for inspiration,” Jeremy White, the agency’s director of transport, told The Verge. Rather, they started with a clean slate that takes cues from Virgin Atlantic airplanes.
Frequent fliers often contend with limited personal space, but SpaceShipTwo makes the most out of cozy dimensions with amenities that perhaps justify the $250,000 price tag for a journey. Each moodlit spacecraft features eight seats, made out of aluminum and carbon fiber, which will be adjusted specifically to fit each passenger’s body measurements to ensure safe harnessing against high gravitational forces. Giant circular windows, meanwhile, offer stellar views back down to Earth. Sometime on the journey, passengers will be released from their chairs to freely float around the cabin, with seats reclining as flat as possible to remove obstacles from the “zero-gravity playground.” On-board cameras record the experience for souvenirs, and a large interior mirror lets passengers witness themselves floating in space firsthand.
