PlanetSpace looks beyond tourism

SPACE.com published yesterday an overview of PlanetSpace and its plans to develop the Silver Dart spaceplane. What’s noteworthy about this review is that space tourism is a relatively low priority for the company, which is instead pursuing orbital flights to the ISS (and presumably other destinations, if any) as well as point-to-point flights, taking advantage of the Silver Dart’s designed capability to glide for long distances. “This is the killer application for space industry,” GEO Geoff Sheerin said of point-to-point flights. “You’ve got a destination already.” Later in the article, Sheerin ranked suborbital tourism flights third in the list of preferred missions for the Silver Dart. “If they’re not flying to orbit, then I’d like to fly them point-to-point and if they’re not flying point-to-point than I’d like to be flying them on short jaunts into space on space tourist flights, ” he said. Of course, the company first has to raise money and develop the vehicle—neither of which will be an easy task.