Commercial human spaceflight: January 2009 Archives

credit SpaceX / The FAA assessment examined the potential impact from 120 launches over five years

The US Federal Aviation Administration has posted to the US government's federal register today its Environmental Assessment (EA) that found no significant impact in the operation of the Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) Falcon 1 and 9 rockets and Dragon spacecraft from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station

credit Spaceport Sweden

Spaceport Sweden has announced that it and Spaceport America are now sister spaceports "[that] will increase global cooperation in the commercial space industry, promote cultural understanding and stimulate local economic development, tourism and education."

On his visit this week to Spaceport Sweden New Mexico Spaceport Authority executive director Steve Landeene spoke to Hyperbola about what this all means

The Russian newswire RIA Novosti is reporting that the head of the Russian Federal Space Agency has stated that the International Space Station will be off limits to tourists, aka spaceflight participants, from June 2009

credit Space Exploration Technologies

For those of you who didn't spot it in my colleague John Croft's NASA commercial resupply services (CRS) analysis Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) has apparently started a study for NASA on how to send to the International Space Station (ISS), in the payload bay of a Space Shuttle, one of the Californian company's Dragon capsules to act as a crew return vehicle for the station's crew

credit Flight / caption: Will he stay or will he go?

While the blogosphere has been twirling to the rumour mill of Obama inspired military NASA reports (alternate universe stuff as far as Hyperbola is concened) and alleged campaigns in favour of the US space agency administrator Mike Griffin I have written a 2009 spaceflight forecast for Hyperbola's print publication sister title Flight International but you can read it here first

Will 2009 build towards a greater new decade of space activity?

The challenge in 2009 is to realise the potential of government and private sector spaceflight programmes that made good progress in 2008 to bring about greater activity in space in the future, activity that is as much commercial in nature as it is exploration