On Friday three of the companies actively developing commercial suborbital vehicles—Armadillo Aerospace, Masten Space Systems, and XCOR Aerospace—gave presentations about their companies’ vehicle development work at the Space Access ’12 conference in Phoenix. Since it’s only been a month and a half since these companies, plus Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic (who are not [...]
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Map of the coast of South Texas, with the approximate location of the proposed SpaceX launch site marked with the blue circle on the coast. The city of Brownsville is in the lower left. Last summer there was a flurry of speculation about an unnamed company interested in a spaceport in south Texas, [...] SpaceX has reserved a launch date at the end of April for a key Dragon test flight to the ISS. “I’m happy to say we have a launch date scheduled on the range and a berthing date with the ISS,” SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell announced during a panel at the Satellite 2012 conference in [...] A big focus on Monday’s sessions of the 2012 Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference in Palo Alto, California, was on the progress that five companies—Armadillo Aerospace, Blue Origin, Masten Space Systems, Virgin Galactic, and XCOR Aerospace—are making on the vehicles that can carry the research payloads, and perhaps even the researchers themselves, in the near [...] A little over two months ago a new company backed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, Stratolaunch Systems, shook up the space industry with plans to develop the world’s largest airplane to perform air launches of a medium-sized rocket. After that initial burst of publicity the company faded from view, but it has remained busy [...] An effort to update a law to extend liability indemnification to commercial spaceflight suppliers is dead for this year in New Mexico. The state legislature adjourned Thursday without taking up the proposed bill, which had stalled out in both the state House and Senate because of opposition from trial lawyers. A late push, including [...] The New Mexico legislature is currently considering updated legislation to provide spaceflight liability indemnification, similar to what exists in several other states, including Florida, Texas, and Virginia. Senate Bill 3 would require spaceflight operators to have participants sign waivers; the company is then protected except in the case of “an act or omission that [...] In early December, Armadillo Aerospace successfully launched its STIG-A suborbital rocket from Spaceport America, flying to an altitude of nearly 42 kilometers before successfully returning to Earth by parachute. Shortly after that December 4 flight they released a video of the flight, shown below: On Saturday they were back at the Spaceport for [...] Tuesday’s announcement of the plans by startup Stratolaunch Systems to develop an air launch system attracted considerable attention and excitement, and understandably so. The world’s biggest airplane! A “dream team” that reunited Paul Allen and Burt Rutan for the first time since SpaceShipOne! An industry team that includes Scaled Composites and SpaceX! A [...] Late last week members of the media received a notice of a press conference at 2 pm EST (1900 GMT) Tuesday about a new space travel venture backed by Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen. No other details were provided until a short time ago, when Allen announced via Twitter that “I have an [...] |
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