Although a small number of extremely wealthy space tourists have paid millions of dollars for orbital spaceflight, by their very nature only a handful of people can take part in these spaceflights each year. It looks like Virgin Galactic will start commercial spaceflights aimed a larger audience soon. According to the Virgin Galactic Website Galactic… Continue reading Commercial Space Travel
Tag: SpaceShipTwo
Spaceport UK?
I was very pleased to hear a couple of weeks ago that the UK government plans to introduce a piece of legislation called the Modern Transport Bill. This may not sound very exciting, but behind the uninspiring name is the intention to ultimately establish the UK's first commercial spaceports, from which space tourists as well as scientists… Continue reading Spaceport UK?
Virgin Galactic: what next ?
Like many people, I was was saddened to hear about the crash of Virgin Galactic's Space Ship Two on a test flight yesterday, which resulted in the death of one of the pilots and the serious injury of the other. It is far too soon to say what caused the crash. That will have to wait… Continue reading Virgin Galactic: what next ?
The Virgin Galactic Experience
The era of mass space tourism is about to begin. Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo is about to launch. It is based upon SpaceShipOne, which was an experimental spacecraft which won a $10 million dollar prize for being the first privately built spacecraft to travel to an altitude of 100 km. This, as you may remember from my… Continue reading The Virgin Galactic Experience
Explaining Science 