{"id":25822,"date":"2018-12-17T00:22:24","date_gmt":"2018-12-17T00:22:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=25822"},"modified":"2018-12-17T00:22:24","modified_gmt":"2018-12-17T00:22:24","slug":"meet-the-pilots-of-virgin-galactics-first-flight-to-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=25822","title":{"rendered":"Meet the pilots of Virgin Galactic&#8217;s first flight to space"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"zn-body__paragraph speakable\"><cite class=\"el-editorial-source\">Mojave, California<\/cite>After months of testing Richard Branson&#8217;s rocket-powered plane at lower altitudes, two of Virgin Galactic&#8217;s test pilots <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2018\/12\/13\/tech\/virgin-galactic-reaches-50-mile-space\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\">made it to the edge of space <\/a>on Thursday \u2014 51.4 miles above Earth. <\/p>\n<div class=\"zn-body__paragraph speakable\">For pilots Mark &#8220;Forger&#8221; Stucky and Frederick &#8220;CJ&#8221; Sturckow, looming over the flight was the memory of a tragic <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2018\/11\/30\/tech\/virgin-galactic-orbital-space-tourism-virgin-orbit\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\">test flight in 2014.<\/a> Virgin Galactic&#8217;s first vehicle, SpaceShipTwo, ripped apart in mid-air, killing a co-pilot. <\/div>\n<div class=\"zn-body__paragraph speakable\">Stucky spoke to CNN Business after Thursday&#8217;s successful firing of the rebuilt SpaceShipTwo, called VSS Unity, to record heights at nearly three times the speed of sound. He said it was like taking a thoroughbred racehorse into a full gallop for the first time.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mojave, CaliforniaAfter months of testing Richard Branson&#8217;s rocket-powered plane at lower altitudes, two of Virgin Galactic&#8217;s test pilots made it to the edge of space on Thursday \u2014 51.4 miles above Earth. For pilots Mark &#8220;Forger&#8221; Stucky and Frederick &#8220;CJ&#8221; Sturckow, looming over the flight was the memory of a tragic test flight in 2014.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":25823,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}