Among the many things about living in the year 2010 that blow my mind (robot vacuums, smartphones, Google Books), the fact that we are at the beginning of commercial space flight is, incredibly, not constantly on my mind. Yet advances are constantly being made, most visibly by Virgin Galactic, which just this last week inaugurated the commercial facility for vertically- and horizontally-launching aircraft. I mean spacecraft. I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to saying that.
Spaceport America, in addition to having a snazzy logo, sports training facilities for Virgin Galactic pilots spacemen, a 10,000ft runway, and will serve as Virgin Galactic’s headquarters for the next two decades. Want to visit? Good luck with that — you should probably just watch this video. → Read More
Check out the latest on SpaceShipTwo, the first commercial option for spaceflight. It’s not going to be cheap to fly, but damn that spaceship looks sexy. → Read More
Somewhere in sleepy Wisconsin – actually in Oshkosh – Virgin Galactic displayed the mothership Eve to the general public for the very first time. The plane soared over thousands of people attending the Experimental Aircraft Association’s annual AirVenture convention and then landed so people could get a closer look. Chances are that this will be the first and last time many of these folks will see of the space rocket delivery system. Not everyone can pay for a trip into space like Sir Richard Branson. It’s a tad pricey. → Read More
WhiteKnightTwo, the plane that will eventually launch Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo just took its maiden test flight and the videos are already up. Watch them and see how weird this plane looks. What if regular commercial aircraft looked like that thing? We could just put all the noisy kids and crying babies on one side and enjoy some peace and quiet on the other. Click on for the videos. → Read More
A London banker named Per Wimmer will be taking a 30-minute space ride in XCOR’s “Lynx” two-seat suborbital space plane (see our previous coverage) in 2010. Los Angeles-based XCOR is offering relatively affordable space trips at around $74,000 a pop. Wimmer has also purchased tickets on Virgin Galactic’s and Space Adventures’ first flights –also set to take off in 2010. Those tickets are about 50% and 25% more expensive, respectively, than XCOR’s. Says Wimmer, “It will be a real race to see which of them goes up first – but if it is Xcor, I will become the first affordable space tourist.” Daily Mail [via Newlaunches] → Read More
When Virgin unveiled the White Knight Two in late July we were told that test flights would begin in September, but that doesn’t appear to be true since it’s the 29th and President of Virgin Galactic Will Whitehorn basically says they’re delayed. But he does reassure us that test flights will happen this year and possibly within weeks. “There have been various taxi trials outside the hangar already, but undertaken at night. The first flight trials will take place when we are ready and will definitely be this year and possibly within the next few weeks,” says Will Whitehorn, the suborbital spaceline’s president. Commercial suborbital flights are still on track for 2010. via The Reg → Read More
Rich is apart of the Virgin America and Virgin Galactic exchange program that allows VA captains the opportunity to pilot the Virgin Galactic flights when they start in 2010. He’s pretty stoked to have been picked from the VA fleet and who wouldn’t be?! Rich has an extensive resume in aviation with over 16,000 hours clocked and he overlooked the testing for Virgin American flights before launch. There is no word on what the training will entail since it’s still in the early stages, but Rich is excited at the prospect of going up into space and says some of the training will involve flight simulators. He wasn’t notified before hand that he was one of few pilots chosen for the exchange program and found out when it was announced internally to the whole company. Good luck, Rich. Save me a seat. PS- Due to some technical difficulties resulting from live blogging in the Mojave, the video interview we took is FUBAR at the moment, but we’ll see what we can do to fix that once we get back to LAX. → Read More
I’m likely never going to get married, but if I ever do, I want to do as this couple is, in space. Branson’s launching Virgin Galactic next year as the world’s first space tourism company, this much is known. But now he’s announced that on Galactic’s first flight, he’ll be personally officiating a wedding, the first ever human wedding off of Earth. Now the pressure’s off me, so I can go back to being a sloppy bachelor. → Read More
I actually am pretty sure that the people who can spend $2,000,000 on space tourism are a different demographic from the people who scrounge miles to get free tickets. And yet, Virgin Galactic is going to let you redeem 200,000 miles for a big 10% off that trip to space. Somehow I doubt they’re going to get a lot of takers on that offer, but it is a nice little taste of the future. Use your air miles to fly to space with Virgin Atlantic [sic] [coolest-gadgets.com] → Read More
Burt Rutan and Richard Branson are doing their “deep pocketed space explorer” thing again. They’ve revealed the second version of their suborbital spacecraft, aptly called “SpaceShipTwo” and pictured above, presumably via a cell phone camera at the event. They also announced that the launch vehicle, “WhiteKnightTwo,” will be on an open architecture “like Linux.” The GPL wasn’t designed with spaceships in mind, however, so they clarified that they will cooperate with anyone who wants to contribute to the design, and will gladly allow others to use components for their own purposes. Check out the link for ongoing coverage and more info about this awesome project. Virgin Galactic unveils SpaceShipTwo; Plans open architecture spaceship [ZDNet] Update: BBC has a better picture. → Read More
This morning, Richard Branson’s spaceship startup Virgin Galactic unveiled the second design of its suborbital vehicles, SpaceShipTwo and White Knight Two. I am blogging this from the press conference at the Museum of Natural History in New York City. SpaceShipTwo is what the passengers will actually ride in, and White Knight Two is the launch vehicle that carries it to a high altitude before releasing the rocket. (It takes less energy to launch from 50,000 feet than from the ground). The design is a little bit different than the initial SpaceShipOne and White Knight One. Both are all carbon-composite vehicles, and are designed with an open architecture so that in the future other companies can use it as a foundation to create space vehicles for unmanned missions. White Knight Two is a double-hulled launch plane with four engines from Pratt & Whitney. Branson suggests that if Virgin Galactic can prove the commercial viability of space flight, it will unlock a “wall of investment that could rival the amount invested in mobile or the Internet.” He also suggests that at some point in the future, in addition to suborbital thrill rides, the vehicle pair could serve as a superfast transport for point-to-point international travel here on Earth. (Forget about supersonic flight, this would be much faster). Looking much further out to a day when next-generation vehicles are flying commercially that can actually deliver small satellites and other payloads, he waxes about the possibilities: One day we might be able to use space for energy production. While I believe aviation has to get more carbon efficient, seemingly benign industries like IT have outpaced aviation in carbon output. [One promise of a commercial space industry is] the ability to launch low-earth satellites that could literally take some of the heat out of the planet, by serving as a repository for information technology. Although the flight rate will be low to start, the vehicle is designed to handle high flight rates several years from now. “The spaceship is being designed so that it can be flown twice a day and the launch plane can be flown three times a day,” says designer Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites. Virgin Galactic has ordered five spaceships from Scaled Composites, with an option of seven more. Rutan predicts that if Virgin Galactic is able to build 40 to 45 spaceships over first twelve years, with 15 launch planes, → Read More
