Space tourism history and skepticism in Boston

The annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Boston hosted a session yesterday titled “50 Years of the Space Age: Looking Back, Looking Forward”. The session an eclectic panel: space historian Roger Launius (as moderator), former Soviet space scientist and advisor Roald Sagdeev, former astronaut Kathy Sullivan, and Andrew […]

Suborbital trip too dangerous for auction

The Fort Myers (Fla.) News-Press reported this week that organizers of a charity auction have removed a suborbital spaceflight trip out of concerns it was too dangerous. The auction, part of the Naples Winter Wine Festival, would have included a spaceflight on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo. However, in the wake of last July’s industrial accident at […]

Geeks from Space: Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Another company is making an effort at developing a reality TV show with a space theme and prize. Isthmus, a paper in Madison, Wisconsin, reports that a pair of Univ. of Wisconsin alums are promoting a proposed reality TV series: “Geeks in Space” (featuring a trailer produced by Bo Ryan, the men’s basketball coach at […]

Astronaut farmer, meet astronaut fab engineer

The introduction of this Arizona Republic article probably puts it best:

By day, Morris Jarvis works as an instrumentation and control engineer for Intel Corp.’s newest factory, Fab 32.

By night and on the weekends, he is Arizona’s version of the “Astronaut Farmer,” building a vehicle he hopes to launch into space someday.

Jarvis is […]

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 […]

Checking out the NASTAR Center

I’m in Philadelphia today visiting the new NASTAR Center, the National Aerospace Training and Research Center. This facility is specifically designing to giving people, including potential space tourists, training in some of the aspects of the spaceflight experience. Last night there was a reception at the center in the room that hosts a centrifuge:

Later […]

At Forbes, time is a relative concept

Forbes.com posted today a review of Michael Belfiore’s book Rocketeers published earlier this summer. Or, at least, the review is time-stamped October 2, 2007, at 3:24 pm Eastern time. The review’s lede: “At California’s Mojave Airport last week, an explosion killed three and critically injured two.” Last week? That accident took place over two months […]

The emissions myth returns

An article in an English-language section of the web site of German magazine Der Spiegel briefly discusses the New Mexico spaceport plans announced last week. But—and you knew there had to be a “but” here—the article weighs that against the “enormous” carbon footprint the suborbital spaceflight from there will generate. The key (and final) sentence […]

The Onion tweaks space tourism

The satirical publication The Onion has its own take on space tourism today where friends of a space tourist ridicule him for taking a boring trip:

Despite having never visited outer space before in his life and being completely free from the everyday demands of work, family, and gravity, space tourist Dick Knowles spent his […]

Remembering the past, planning for the future

In this week’s issue of The Space Review, Tim Pickens recalls his good friend, Glen May, one of the three people who died in the explosion Thursday in Mojave. The two had worked together on the SpaceShipOne propulsion development effort several years ago. “Anyone who has seen SpaceShipOne tested or flown should think of Glen,” […]