When Donald J. Trump won the U.S. Presidency, it was a pretty fair bet that America’s space program would soon be setting its sights on the Moon once again. What few saw coming however, was the bombshell that SpaceX dropped on Monday, as the company announced that it is in the advanced stages of mounting […]
After completing four captive carry test flights, Virgin Galactic conducted the first-free flight drop test of its second SpaceShipTwo, VSS Unity. The test took place on Saturday, December 3rd over California’s Mojave Desert. “Today, VSS Unity was piloted by Mark Stucky and Dave Mackay, with pilots Mike Masucci and Todd Ericsson as well as […]
A long touted lunar circumnavigation for space tourists is back in the news with reports from Russia that RSC Energia now has 8 possible candidates for the mission, which would take place aboard a specially modified Soyuz. The story from Sputniknews, actually quotes an interview from another paper Izvestia, which somewhat paradoxically (or not) made […]
There is little doubt that SpaceX is for the moment in a class by itself in developing partially reusable orbital space transportation, but it is interesting to note that the company has had very little to say regarding what if any role it sees for space tourism in the products it is developing. The Dragon […]
Earlier this week, Blue Origin finally opened the doors of its Kent, Washington headquarters to a small group of reporters. Although the overall purpose was to begin to pull the veil off a privately funded space development effort which up until now has inevitably been accompanied by the word “secretive,” one emerging theme was to […]
The nascent suborbital space tourism industry suffered a major blow on October 31st, 2014, when Virgin Galactic’s VSS Enterprise was lost in a mid-air breakup over the Mojave desert during a powered test flight. Co-pilot Michael Alsbury was killed, and pilot Michael Siebold was badly injured. With the company already years behind schedule in the […]
Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground In the second major disaster to strike commercial space in the same week, Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo broke up in the air above the Mojave desert shortly after igniting its new plastic compound based hybrid motor in what would have been its first powered test flight. […]
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