Saturday’s issue of the Nashua (N.H.) Telegraph has an editorial raising questions about the environmental impact of suborbital spaceflight. The article is based on a recent AP article about the growth of the suborbital space tourism field, specifically mentioning the recent investment in XCOR Aerospace. (You can tell that the editorial is not going [...]
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Given all the hype and hoopla surrounding many new commercial space ventures these days, it’s easy to overlook the fact that there are people out there not convinced that these companies, or the industry in general, are that real. A case in point: on the web site for Earth & Sky, a science radio show, [...] While Virgin Galactic got a lot of publicity in the Middle East last week when it announced its first customer from the UAE, not everyone is impressed. In an article in ArabianBusiness.com, Anil Bhoyrul sees the announcement, and Virgin Galactic itself, as little more than a publicity stunt designed to further the overall Virgin brand. [...] When Dennis Tito flew six years ago, the question was whether or not a private fare-paying citizen could visit the International Space Station. By last year that controversy had disappeared and had been replaced by more mundane ones: was Anousheh Ansari the first female space tourist or not? So far, Charles Simonyi’s flight to [...] The web site of Smithsonian magazine includes a brief interview with Joe Sutter, author of a new book about the 747. There’s a brief but interesting exchange in the interview of relevance here: If you were a young aerospace engineer just starting out today, what area would you be most interested in? The private space industry [...] Today marks the second anniversary of SpaceShipOne’s capture of the $10-million Ansari X Prize with its second suborbital spaceflight in under a week. (Of course, they didn’t officially get the check until a ceremony in St. Louis the following month; details, details.) MSNBC’s Alan Boyle reflects on the anniversary and asks, in essence: dude, [...] That’s the suggestion of Jack Kennedy, a Virginia attorney, in an op-ed in the Roanoke Times this week. Looking at the boom in commercial spaceports in the US and elsewhere, he believes that the state is missing an opportunity to get involved by using an existing spaceport, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS), co-located with the [...] In this week’s issue of The Space Review, Rick Tumlinson writes about why visitors to the ISS like Anousheh Ansari should not be called “tourists”. The catch here is that this essay was actually written back in 2000, right after Dennis Tito signed with MirCorp to fly as the first passenger to pay his way [...] Orlando Sentinel columnist Eric Michaels recounts a trip on Zero-G’s aircraft he took earlier this year. It’s clear from his column that he enjoyed the trip; his stomach, not so much: “Trust me, I’ve never had so much fun making myself sick.” In his case, the queasiness didn’t come until after he completed all [...] |
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Year-end space tourism wrapup
A few odds and ends from the last week of 2007:
The Washington Times reported on Richard Garriott’s planned flight to the ISS in 2008 in an article published on Christmas Day. In addition to Garriott’s plans to perform commercial experiments on his flight, the article notes that “companies are invited to develop advertising campaigns or [...]