MSNBC’s Cosmic Log cites a report by the Interfax-Military News Agency (not freely available online) with some news about Explorer, the suborbital space tourism vehicle under development in Russia for Space Adventures. According to the report, the vehicle, known is Russia as the AKS-55-5, will be ready to begin test flights “as early as 2009″. […]
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On the aptly-named Space Cynic blog, Shubber Ali complained on Sunday about an article in the Sydney Morning Herald that gave what he felt was an overly rosy view of the emerging space tourism industry. As he put it: “‘Oh, no,’ i thought to myself. The Kool-Aid has made it to Australia.” While the article […] In an interview in this week’s issue of The Space Review, former House Speaker (and potential 2008 presidential candidate talks about a variety of space issues, including space tourism. It sounds like he’d be willing to buy a suborbital ticket, although it’s not clear how much he’d be willing to pay: TSR: Beyond participating in […] The Russian newspaper Kommersant reported Monday that Anousheh Ansari might fly to the ISS before Charles Simonyi, the ex-Microsoft developer who signed a contract with Space Adventures last month. According to a Roskosmos official cited in the article, Simonyi’s plans to fly in spring 2007 may change because of “some recent developments, related to his […] Michael Belfiore reports on his blog on a speech given by Burt Rutan before high school students in Mojave. Rutan said that the town hasn’t changed much since he moved there in 1974, but that over the next four to five years “Mojave’s going to look a whole lot different.” With what he claims to […] In an article in this week’s issue of The Space Review, I write about the Teachers in Space program being kicked off by the Space Frontier Foundation. The project seeks to provide teachers with the experience of traveling in space by giving them rides on suborbital vehicles. While not strictly space tourism, a project like […] It’s still a couple of years or so before SpaceShipTwo will be ready to fly, but Virgin Galactic’s pilots are busy, Flight International reports. Two of them are already flying SS2 in a simulator, while a third is working on the manual for the vehicle. Prospective pilots should note that Virgin may be hiring some […] As before, here’s a brief summary of some highlights of the Space Access ’06 sessions on Saturday relevant to space tourism: You might remember the February 2005 announcement of the Personal Spaceflight Federation, a new industry group created to support the emerging space tourism industry. However, after that initial announcement, there was no other visible […] There were a lot of good presentations Friday at the Space Access ’06 conference in Phoenix, although not necessarily a lot of breaking news. Given limited time (plus the fact that the wireless network in the conference room was down most of the day) I’ll for the moment provide some brief highlights: Rick Homans, secretary […] |
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SpaceShipOne as a “Kitty Hawk moment”
In an essay in this week’s issue of The Space Review, Bob Clarebrough called the 2004 flights of SpaceShipOne a “Kitty Hark moment”: “that instant when the impossible becomes a reality.” Clarebrough mentions this because suborbital passenger spaceflight has not yet won broad acceptance, pointing to some cynical commentary in both the American and British […]