they re expending enough energy 50 times more energy than we re seeing here by these vehicles. it s the velocity squared for high school a students at home, you know, it s mach 3 minus versus mach 27 or 28 thereabouts. and seven times the velocity and 49 times the energy. it s much harder, to put it that way. we re hearing from virgin fwa lactic that we re within 15 minutes, probably, by 11:30 a.m. eastern we ll have the separation which is the release. i m using old fashioned terms. release of the spaceship unity. a rock can fall back to earth.
that s what it s been the last few days. moments ago we am a tarantula crawl by on the platform. the excitement building here at space port america. this is not a situation where the for people in the neighboring communities are going to come and watch. this is pretty much invitation only on the scene. as you can see, we have the mother ship eve with unity below it now taxiing the runway. a two-mile runway built specifically just for this. just for commercial space flight. and now preparing to take off. the chief pilot as we ve said, david mckay, who is a veteran of the royal air force, and then you ve got his copilot, his fellow test pilot also there with him in the cockpit. and as you know, we ve mentioned his name many times and his name is i m michael masucci. reporter: thank you, sir. he has a great nickname.
floating weightless for 3 to 4 minutes? you get the same effect and regardless, the faa is still going to give those folks the civilian astronaut wings, if you will. i have to say, as you know, anything that has a virgin brand on is or richard branson brand on it, they tend to do it big and they ve certainly done this one up big. they ve got a heck of a performance on the stage here. stephen colbert is also going to be helping to emcee the online presence here. they ve got music playing. it s going to be quite an experience on the ground. looks like they re rolling. let s watch, it s rolling. this is vss unity on the mother ship eve getting ready. we believe it s got good speed to it so it looks like this might be the take-off roll on a two-mile runway at space port america. let s watch this go. and we have left-off of the vss unity on the mother ship eve
this is not going to fall back. this is going to land properly because the whole point about this exercise was that it was going to be reusable. i m going to ask you standby. msnbc is going to join our mothership network nbc for a special report on the historic virgin galactic space launch. we re anticipating separation in just a few minutes. good morning. i m willie geist in new york. we re coming on-air with the launch in space travel. 70-year-old richard branson is aboard the virgin galacticship unity. he and five crew members will experience a few minutes of weightlessness before returning and landing on a runway in the new mexico desert. the mission began with the you knowty spaceship hanging below a mothership and then will be released momentarily to touch the edge of outer space.
you re checking all the systems to make sure everything is a go. you have people in mission control in charge of hydraulics, propulsion, these different areas that need everyone to give a sign-off before you start running down the runway. and i think that when i launched in space in 2008, you know, we were actually just launched in 2007, and we had some engine actually, it s rolling right now. so they re a little bit late, but yeah. leland is a better tv anchor than i am. he noticed it was rolling before i did. this is the beginning of the flight for vss unity. vss stands for virgin space ship unity. unity is the model of plane space ship 2. as peter and i were discussing, the aircraft that launched and succeeded in 2004 to win the x