Recently in Space tourism Category

credit: Virgin Galactic

Scaled Composites founder, chief technology officer and designer-in-chief of the SpaceShipTwo/WhiteKnightTwo subortbial launch system, Burt Rutan, talked to The Washington Post about his dreams of a cislunar resort

1 The Russian Federal Space Agency's website is carrying a statement (see link) saying that its head Anatoly Perminov knew nothing of this agreement you publicised between you and Roscosmos for your private flight. How do you respond to this?

credit: CIRA

This is a Crew Space Transportation System concept from an Italian Aerospace Research Center, aka CIRA, presentation and shows a biconic capsule-like design at the bottom of the picture highlighted by a red circle

Speaking to a Thales Alenia Space manager the other week about CSTS and other matters I was told that biconic was still in the trade space. But can anyone guess what the conical capsule is that is attached to what looks like the International Space Station's Node 3 but with a very odd looking docking system - could it be ATLAS? For the space tourism stuff, click on...

So come Wednesday morning we had all staggered into The Power House at New York's American Museum of Natural History for the press conference

Behind us scribblers were the tv cameras, it looked like the coverage of the event would be global

The end of the press conference descended into chaotic thronging crowds as a large media scrum formed around Sir Richard Branson and Burt Rutan

This blog contains all the images released by Virgin Galactic for the unveiling of the SpaceShipTwo and its carrier aircraft White Knight II

Due to technical difficulties I have been unable to blog live but a video recording of the key part of the press conference will be available later today

However I can report that;

Burt Rutan, looking frail after a recent illness, said that they still did not know what caused the accident at Scaled's facility last July but they were working with Californian authorities and aerospace consultants to find out. Once a cause was found that would be published.

Talking about the twin-fuselage White Knight II (WKII) the aircraft, when not carrying SpaceShipTwo, can make a 6g descending wind up turn and that can be used to give passengers g training prior to their flights. Using parabolic flight the WKII will also simulate weightlessness for a few seconds

Burt Rutan said that on reentry passengers will experience 4g and above for 20s and that the build up from microgravity to 1g will be 20-25s.

More soon, including that video

After a busy start to the week, following last Friday spent with the European Space Agency in Friedrichsafen, Germany, I am on the road again today making my way across the Atlantic for the Virgin Galactic unveiling of the designs for SpaceShipTwo and its carrier aircraft White Knight II

If all goes well expect to see me blog live from the press conference at the American Museum of Natural History from 1000h local time Wednesday. Will the designs look anything like this I ask myself?

Catch them while they're in your orbital plane

The LA Times has got an author and blogger Rand Simberg debating NASA for what its worth

If you have any bright ideas NASA would like to hear them about its future space suits

Spaceref.com is reporting that NASA has placed an order for its Orion launch abort system test launch pad

Aviation Week and Space Technology is reporting that China plans to have a lunar sample return mission. What? You mean like this one Flight has exclusive video of?

Just as SpaceX is presently the clear leader in the development of new orbital transportation systems, Virgin Galactic is now the only obvious candidate for the nascent suborbital market in the next few years. Unless Jeff Bezos’ ultra secret Blue Origin team spring a surprise on everyone. Click here for part one

Low Earth orbit tourism and NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) demonstration programme are not obviously linked but the intentions of one of COTS participants, California based-Space Exploration Technologies, could see commercial human spaceflight actually emerge from a government programme sometime in the next decade.

Meanwhile the privately funded efforts of Virgin Galactic appear to make head way with offers of suborbital flights earlier than anything conceived by SpaceX, yet can it become another route to realising low cost mass access to LEO and beyond? In this marathon race who is the hare and who is the tortoise?