In an article in this week’s issue of The Space Review, Richard Speck of Micro-Space Inc. proposed a radical approach to human orbital spaceflight: to keep launch costs low, make the spacecraft as simple and as lightweight as possible. He proposes a spacecraft that is little more than a spacesuited astronaut strapped into a heat […]
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A pair of articles in Sunday’s edition of the Wichita Eagle discuss the connections between Rocketplane and Wichita and the Oklahoma Spaceport. The Learjet that Rocketplane is converting into its XP spaceplane was built in Wichita, and some of Rocketplane’s employees previously worked for aerospace companies in the Kansas city. Even David Urie, Rocketplane’s executive […] The Neon Trees is a small UK band that plays a type of music that they call “country power-pop” (which actually sounds more like folk than anything else). The uber-blog Boing Boing notes that one song available on their site, “The Life and Times of Jeff”, was inspired by Jeff Bezos, the Amazon.com founder who […] New Scientist magazine has a brief note about plans by Bigelow Aerospace to launch its first test of its inflatable habitats, modules that could eventually be used for orbital hotels. A curious comment in the article: “The launch dates cannot be divulged because the use of an ICBM means the information falls under US arms […] Yesterday Eric Anderson, CEO of space tourism operator Space Adventures, spoke at the Global Travel & Tourism Summit in Washington. I wasn’t in attendance, but the conference organizers did post an excerpt of his talk, where he impresses upon attendees the future of space tourism: Almost exactly 45 years ago the first manned space flight […] You may not have heard of Travelzoo, a web site that bills itself as “a global Internet media company” that specializes in publicizing travel deals, but 10 million people apparently have. The company celebrated the ten millionth subscriber to its email newsletters by awarding that person, Matthew Wagner, a suborbital spaceflight through Space Adventures. Wagner […] Itar-Tass reported Monday that a new poll found that one in three Russians would like to fly in space. That ratio rises to nearly one in two for those aged 18-30. The brief article doesn’t include many details about the poll, including what price(s), if any, respondents were told they’d have to pay to make […] No, this is not some kind of World Cup reference, but rather the apparent competition between two sites in Europe for a future Virgin Galactic spaceport. The British newspaper The Business noted in Sunday’s edition that Virgin Galactic has set its sights on Kiruna, in northern Sweden. Flights there would begin as early as 2011 […] In this week’s issue of The Space Review, Tom Hill reviews a new novel, Orbit, that may be one of the first thrillers associated with space tourism. In the John J. Nance novel, tourist Kip Dawson is trapped in orbit when his spacecraft is apparently struck by a micrometeorite, killing the pilot. Will Dawson get […] |
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What an original concept
An essay in The Business newspaper in the UK by Madsen Pirie, president of the Adam Smith Institute, examines the state of the nascent space tourism industry. Pirie is surprised, albeit pleasantly, by what he sees: “What is interesting is the innovative approach which private enterprise has taken. Instead of having a committee approve a […]