Brief notes: Soyuz, Virgin, and… iCarly?

The news media has something of a case of amnesia when it comes to space tourism in Russia: they regularly, breathlessly report comments that Russia will stop flying space tourists on Soyuz flights to the ISS. Every few months, it seems, a Russian official makes comments to that regard, dutifully reported by the wire [...]

Other conference announcements

Besides the developments by several vehicle operators, there have been a number of other announcements by various organizations at the Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference. The biggest, in the plenary speech by NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver, is that NASA has requested $15 million for the Commercial Reusable Suborbital Research (CRuSR) program in its FY11 [...]

Blue Origin proposes orbital vehicle

Illustration of Blue Origin’s orbital crew vehicle, designed to be launched on an Atlas 5, as shown on a NASA slide at an FAA conference last week.

One of the most intriguing NewSpace companies is Blue Origin, perhaps because they’re also one of the most secretive. Backed by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos—and thus without [...]

Training begins for suborbital scientist-astronauts

An initial group of a dozen prospective scientist-astronauts will begin a two-day training program today at the NASTAR Center just outside Philadelphia in preparation for future flights on commercial suborbital vehicles. The training will include both classroom instruction and “altitude chamber training, multi-axes centrifuge training for launch and reentry accelerations, and several distraction factor [...]

Registration deadline approaching for suborbital science conference

In The Space Review last month I noted an emerging market for commercial suborbital vehicles: research and education. There’s growing interest among scientists in a variety of disciplines to take advantage of vehicles under development to serve the space tourism market to fly experiments at a fraction of the cost of sounding rockets and [...]

XCOR wins a major customer

XCOR Aerospace announced this afternoon a major business development for the suborbital vehicle developer: a contract to provide suborbital space launch services for a South Korean organization. XOCR will provide and operate a Lynx Mark 2 vehicle to the Yecheon Astro Space Center under a “wet lease” model, pending export control approvals. [...]

Space tourism as “the final undiscovered frontier”?

A survey released yesterday by World Travel Market, a UK-based travel industry event organization, offers a somewhat pessimistic take on the space tourism market. The study, based on a poll of 1,030 Britons who took a summer vacation in 2009, found that only 27% said they would be interested in traveling into space; 50% [...]

Video: WK2 in Las Cruces

A short video I shot with a pocket HD camera (Kodak Zi6) of one of the low overflights of Las Cruces International Airport by WhiteKnightTwo on Saturday. For better viewing go to the video on YouTube and be sure to select the HD option to see it in its full glory.

WK2 aborts Spaceport America flyby

As you may have heard by now, WhiteKnightTwo was unable to make its planned flyover of the groundbreaking ceremonies for Spaceport America on Friday. Flightglobal.com has a good summary of the aborted flight, which ran into problems when an actuator warning light came on during the flight, apparently just as they reached the Arizona-New Mexico [...]

One more Odyssey update

It’s been an eventful week for Project Odyssey, the space tourism training effort stood up late last year in Florida, and its director, Brice Harris. Last Friday the Florida inspector general’s office concluded Harris “likely violated” state law by taking the job after playing a major role in getting the project state money while [...]