Photo via Youtube
This past Friday, February 19, in the Mojave Desert in California, humankind officially entered the future as Virgin Galactic unveiled VSS UNITY, the vessel that will (most likely) be the first to undertake commercial spaceflight—with some help from Stephen Hawking and Porter Robinson.A glimmering and sleek advancement on prior models, Galactic's UNITY rolled into a massive hangar full of giddy nerds in the desert behind a triumphant-but-casual Richard Branson, who blew kisses at the audience from atop a Range Rover like he was Zaphod Beeblebrox himself, as a fittingly stratospheric piece of electronic music filled the room to the rafters.The tune in question is precocious intronaut Porter Robinson's much lauded "Sea of Voices," from his breakout 2014 album Worlds, released on the fittingly titled Astralwerks. The track is all over Virgin Galactic's launch, and it also played to introduce a guy who knows a whole lot about astral works—the world renowned astrophysicist Hawking.Hawking, who is attributed with naming the vessel UNITY, began his monologue emotionally, by saying "I once confessed that my ultimate ambition was to to fly into space, but I thought no one would take me." Now with his own $250,000 voyage on UNITY booked, Hawking ended on an soaring note: "By opening up space, we help in changing the world for good. Please welcome Virgin Spaceship Unity."There is still no set launch date for the initial Virgin Galactic departures. After their second test run exploded during descent in 2014, killing the pilot Michael Asbury in the process, Branson has been hesitant to rush the testing process, despite quickening competition from space travel challengers XCOR Space Expeditions and Spacex respectively. Those competitors, however, don't have EDM on their side, which will surely be the deciding factor in this commercial space race. The future is now! And it sounds like music from two years ago! Check out footage from the event below.