ISPS Day 2: Spaceports, business models, and astronauts

Above: a panel of space travelers discuss the spaceflight experience on Thursday afternoon. From left: Jeff Hoffman, Jay Buckey, Michael Lopez-Alegria, Anousheh Ansari, Dan Barry, Janice Voss, and John Herrington.

The second and final day of the International Symposium for Personal Spaceflight started off with a focus on spaceports (actually, it started off with […]

ISPS Day 1 wrap-up

(The picture above doesn’t have anything to do directly with the conference, it’s just a nice view of the Moon rising around sunset Wednesday as seen from the conference site in Las Cruces.)

Yesterday’s sessions of the International Symposium for Personal Spaceflight didn’t have any groundbreaking revelations, but there were still some interesting developments […]

Rocketplane’s uncertain future

One of the big topics that will likely come up during the ISPS and X Prize Cup will be the future of Rocketplane Inc. given its loss of its funded COTS award earlier this month. (Rocketplane president George French and VP of business development Chuck Lauer are both scheduled to be on the first panel […]

Miscellaneous news

Some brief items in recent days associated with space tourism:

Virgin Galactic is making inroads in India, establishing relationships with travel agencies there. Virgin is charging 8 million rupees for a suborbital flight, which works out to just over $200,000 at current exchange rates. Back in the US, how is one travel agency selling Virgin […]

When will Virgin Galactic begin service?

There have been some conflicting statements in the media recently about when Virgin Galactic would begin passenger service. Flight International reported this week that the company is “still a few years away from operations”, in the words of company COO Alex Tai, who spoke a Royal Aeronautical Society event in London last week on the […]

RpK fights COTS termination

Last month, NASA issued a notice to Rocketplane Kistler (RpK) announcing its intent to terminate the $207-million COTS award the space agency made to the company last August. NASA cited RpK’s failure to meet its financing milestones in its agreement. That notice started a 30-day waiting period before NASA would take any action to terminate […]

Checking in with Galactic Suite

Since Galactic Suite formally announced their plans in August to develop a space hotel by 2012, generating a burst of publicity as well as unanswered questions about their funding, schedule, transportation options, and the like, they have kept a low profile. ArabianBusiness.com has an interview with project director Xavier Claramunt today with a bit of […]

Next Soyuz tourist: Richard Garriott

Space Adventures announced this morning that Richard Garriott will be the company’s next customer to fly to the ISS on a Soyuz mission. Garriott’s flight is scheduled for October 2008, the next scheduled taxi flight with an open seat. Garriott is billed as the first “second generation” astronaut: his father, Owen Garriott, was a NASA […]

Going Dutch in space

A lucky Dutch radio listener will win a suborbital spaceflight, according to a report by Radio Netherlands. The Dutch station “Q-music” is giving away the suborbital flight, provided by Space Adventures; the winner will be announced Saturday during an event at an aviation and space museum in Lelystad. The article is a bit skeptical about […]

Google Lunar X Prize update

I just got out of some press events associated with the Google Lunar X Prize announcement this morning here in LA (where I discovered I created a little heartburn among the X Prize folks by linking to the HuffPo piece earlier this morning.) I’ll have more later, but some highlights from the announcement:

This is […]

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