Virgin update and other notes
- Rob Coppinger of Flightglobal.com covered a speech this morning by Will Whitehorn of Virgin Galactic at a UK space conference. Whitehorn said that the first flight of WhiteKnightTwo will be “soon” (but we’ve heard that before) and that SpaceShipTwo is “almost finished”. Virgin Galactic is now putting its second group of 100 customers through centrifuge training and had taken in $40 million in deposits, Whitehorn added that Virgin Galactic planned on brining in external investors in late 2009 and has already been approached by potential investors.
- The British media reported that Formula 1 champion driver Lewis Hamilton has purchased tickets on Virgin Galactic for himself, his girlfriend (Nicole Scherzinger, a member of the group Pussycat Dolls) and three other family members. That report, though, has been denied by a spokesman for Hamilton’s racing group. Nonetheless, it seems to have brought out the worst in some Spanish racing fans.
- The Conrad Foundation will be hosting a webcast at 5 pm EST (2200 GMT) Thursday with Pat Hynes, director of the New Mexico Space Grant Consortium, to discuss “current efforts in the personal spaceflight industry” with a focus on Spaceport America.
- Discovered in the software section of the local computer store: Symantec is holding a contest with a suborbital spaceflight as the grand prize. Also up for grabs are zero-gravity flights by ZERO-G, all intended to emphasize that the Norton 2009 suite of software is the “fastest and lightest” in the industry. The suborbital flight is being provided by Space Adventures, which is currently not emphasizing suborbital flights; the contest rules state only that the flight “will depart at a date and time and from a location to be determined by Sponsor in its sole discretion”.
[…] there’s a catch. The suborbital flight that León won is provided by Space Adventures, which (as noted here a few months ago), isn’t emphasizing the suborbital side of its business, so it’s not at all clear when […]