Virgin Galactic reaches 82km in test flight earlier today

[gary]

Originally Posted by ABC News 14 Dec 2018

Virgin Galactic's tourism spaceship climbed more than 80 kilometres above California's Mojave Desert in a test flight, reaching for the first time what the company considers the boundary of space.

The rocket ship hit an altitude of 82 kilometres before beginning its gliding descent, mission official Enrico Palermo said. It landed on a runway minutes later.

"We made it to space!" Mr Palermo said.

The supersonic flight takes Virgin Galactic closer to turning the long-delayed dream of commercial space tourism into reality.

Story and video here :-
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-...-test/10618704

[N1 (Mirko)]

Karman who?

Be interesting to know if "other US agencies" includes the space one.

[julianh72 (Julian)]

The U.S. Air Force definition of an astronaut is a person who has flown higher than 50 miles (80 kilometres) above mean sea level, approximately the line between the mesosphere and the thermosphere.

Note that von Kármán's original notes and calculations concluded the boundary should be 270,000 ft (51 miles / 82 km), but he rounded this up to 100 km.

https://www.livescience.com/63166-ou...rman-line.html