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 exercises”, […]
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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 other […] 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. The center will […] 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% said […] 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. […] 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 […] 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 working […] Below is an interview I did with Chuck Lauer of Rocketplane Global during the Space Access ’09 conference in Phoenix earlier this month. Chuck talks about the current status of Rocketplane Global and the markets they’re pursuing for their suborbital vehicle. He also recaps what he said at the conference about Rocketplane Kistler and their […] Yesterday a Canadian travel agency who is accredited to sell flights on Virgin Galactic held a press conference to provide an update on Virgin’s activities, with the message that, despite the economy, people are still interested in, and willing to pay for, suborbital spaceflights, as the Toronto Star reports today. That’s not too surprising if […] Software developer Symantec announced Wednesday the winner of its contest to send someone into space: Jorge Patricio León López, who was selected from 30 finalists after participating in a weightless aircraft flight by Zero-G. As the press release claims, “In addition to being one of the first to participate in a commercial space travel flight, […] |
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