Virgin Galactic sent an update to subscribers of its email list on Wednesday. The update isn’t posted on its web site, so here’s a summary:
- Virgin announced last week its first “Founder” from Dubai, an artist named Namira Salim. (An article from over five years ago described her as a “sculptor, painter, musician and a designer”). That puts her in a race with Adnan Al Maimani as to who will be the first space tourist from the United Arab Emirates; Al Maimani signed up with Space Adventures last week for suborbital flights from the Ras Al-Khaimah spaceport.
- Virgin plans appearances at a number of upcoming conferences and events, including ISDC, the Royal Aeronautical Society space tourism forum in June, the Farnborough Air Show in July, and the EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh.
- Virgin Galactic officials recently paid a visit to Sweden as guests of the Swedish Space Corporation. Although not mentioned in the update, Virgin’s Will Whitehorn told The Times of London last month that they were scouting out Kiruna as a possible European spaceport for the company.
- The company was hawking its “Galactic Quest” game on its Virgin Skill web site. Winning the game doesn’t get you a seat on a future flight, but it does get you $5,000 closer to being able to pay for a ticket yourself.
[…] In a post yesterday, I noted that Virgin Galactic is planning to attend a number of upcoming conferences. In addition to those events, there are a couple of other conferences coming up that will discuss, in part, space tourism: […]
[…] The article calls her a “sculptor, musician, poetess, astrologist, peace activist and humanist”, but despite her many talents, she doesn’t have much of a presence online: a Google search on her name turns up few references other than articles about her pans to go to space; one of the few exceptions is this older article about her, which we mentioned here back in April. […]