Space Tourism | Universe Today

After 660 days in space and 10,000 orbits around Earth, the pioneering inflatable prototype is still going strong. Launched atop a converted intercontinental ballistic missile on July 12th, 2006, the Bigelow Aerospace vision for a space hotel is gradually being realized. The first test was to see whether the design could self-inflate and carry out basic operations automatically, but after nearly two years of travelling 270 million miles (435 million kliometers), the prototype has surpassed all expectations and provides an excellent foundation for the company's first manned mission in 2011…
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He's married a couple on board a Virgin America jet, he's also officiated the marriage of Google's co-founder Larry Page on his private island in the Caribbean, now Richard Branson wants to marry couples as they reach the apex of their Virgin Galactic flights into space. The British billionaire already has two wedding-related bookings, one marriage and one honeymoon, and it is hoped he will obtain a licence to conduct the ceremonies for more. Certainly unique, but I wonder how popular getting hitched in zero gravity will be…
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Combining the exhilaration of racing, with the power of rocket engines and the appeal of video gaming, Rocket Racing League (RRL) CEO Granger Whitelaw said the new sports entertainment league is the sport for geeks. “We haven’t really had a sport, but now we do,” said Whitelaw, a self-professed geek at a press conference on April 14, 2008. “We now have one where we combine real athletes and real heroes with rocket planes and with gaming that we love to do so much.” At the press conference, members of the RRL announced its live first exhibition, to be held August 1st and 2nd at the EAA AirVenture airshow in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, one of the largest airshows in the world. Additional exhibitions later in the year were also announced.
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In a recent interview, Richard Branson outlined his vision for Virgin Galactic's future. Once tourists are taken into Earth orbit, it seems possible that space hotels could be developed for longer stop-overs in space. He then went on to mention that short "sight-seeing" tours to the Moon could be started from these ultimate hotels. If we are to make travel to the Moon routine enough to send tourists there, the trip would need to be as short as possible. So how long is the commute from the Earth to the Moon anyway? Man and machine have made that trip already, some took a very long time, and others were astonishingly fast…
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It is really taking shape. The future of Virgin Galactic's fleet of space tourism rockets is currently forming in a non-descript factory in the Mojave Desert, California. As if to prove that the Scaled Composite-design is not a pipe dream, pictures of the first commercial spaceflight vehicle have been released. It looks fairly crude and welded together, but this forms the bare bones of the worlds first viable hi-tech space tourism vehicle. All it needs now are some windows, seats, wings and an engine and we're good to go!
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XCOR Aerospace has thrown its hat into the space tourism ring, unveiling its two-seat suborbital spaceship, the Lynx. With its first flights scheduled for 2010, XCOR’s projected price per ticket will be half of what other suborbital companies like Virgin Galactic and Rocketplane are charging. But the Lynx’s flight will also be about half the duration and about two-thirds the altitude of the other companies. At $100,000, a seat on the Lynx is not exactly cheap, but its possible this lower price could cause a price war with the other space tourism companies, which is good news for anyone considering taking a suborbital flight.
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Europe's leading spacecraft manufacturer EADS Astrium, the builders of the Ariane rocket (that launches many of Europe's space missions), has announced plans to mass produce the next generation of space planes. Developing the design of a single-stage "rocket plane", the company believes there will be a demand for 10 spacecraft per year when the space tourism idea "takes off". Astrium won't be running tourist trips themselves; they will simply supply the hardware to space tourism companies predicting the industry will progress along the same lines of a classical aeronautical business model. Astrium has even released an excellent and inspiring (and realistic!) promotional video simulation of the spacecraft launch and view of space…
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A British engineering company has stepped into the commercial spaceflight arena with an ambitious and inspiring design of a possible airliner of the future. The A2, the design behind the Long-Term Advanced Propulsion Concepts and Technologies (LAPCAT) project, will carry 300 passengers, will have a range of 20,000 km and will be capable of travelling twice the speed of Concorde - that's a sustained velocity of Mach 5. It will also be capable of atmospheric and space flight leading to the exciting possibility of becoming a large vehicle shuttling passengers, astronauts and payloads into orbit…
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Your trip to space is just around the corner now. In the next step in its goal of sending regular folk to space, Virgin Galactic today unveiled the vehicle that's going to take them there: SpaceShipTwo. The announcement was made today at a press conference at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
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Things are moving quickly for Virgin Galactic. The world's first commercial space tourism company has gone from strength to strength since developing Scaled Composite's X-Prize-winning space ship design into Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo. Now, as Virgin Galactic is well on its way to building the world's first space port in the New Mexico desert, Richard Branson discusses his vision the company's direction and very exciting future.
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Safety inspectors in California have cited Scaled Composites for being at fault for the explosion that killed three employees at their Mojave Air and Space Port. The explosion occurred in July 2007 and stunned the X-Prize winning company. They now face a maximum fine of $25,310.
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The craze for bottled water and energy drinks has reached new heights. An Albuquerque, New Mexico company has created specialized drinks made from ingredients that have been flown to space. Microgravity Enterprises, Inc. (MEI) says the demand for their drinks has grown and they are expanding their distribution base.
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For his next big plan for the private space industry, Richard Branson is thinking up new ways to excite affluent space tourists: flying them into the biggest lightshow on Earth, the Aurora Borealis. Although the New Mexico Virgin Galactic Spaceport isn't scheduled for completion until 2010, the British entrepreneur is already planning his next project intended for cruises into the spectacular space phenomenon from an Arctic launchpad.
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Former NASA astronaut John Herrington has resigned from the commercial space company Rocketplane Global, Inc. Herrington left NASA in 2005 to join Rocketplane as vice president and director of flight operations. He was slated to pilot the company’s passenger-carrying suborbital XP spaceplane. His resignation was effective on December 21, 2007.
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Space tourism company Space Adventures has announced their next orbit-bound customer. This time it's going to be video game legend Richard Garriott. All you Ultima fans might know him as Lord British. If all goes well, Garriott will ride to the International Space Station in October 2008. And here's the cool thing: his father, Owen Garriott was an astronaut for NASA, and spent time in orbit aboard Skylab and Spacelab-1. Like father, like son.
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In case you haven't heard, one of the premier adventurers of our time, Steve Fossett went missing about 4 days ago. The 63-year pilot was supposed to be making a short flight around the Nevada desert, but he never returned, and hasn't been seen since. Searchers have now mobilized, and are scouring the rugged area for any sign of Fossett, or his airplane.
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Somebody pinch me, because I still can't believe this is going forward. The world's first commercial spaceport took the next step today, releasing new plans and illustrations to the public today. With a building that looks like the Millennium Falcon with wings, the spaceport, and its main tenant, Virgin Galactic, are taking this whole "space is cool" concept very, very seriously.
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Where are you planning to go on your next vacation? Hawaii, Mexico, or Europe would be nice. But what about a trip into orbit? Space tourism entrepreneur Robert Bigelow announced this week that he's going to be fast tracking his plans to a launch an orbital space hotel. With his current prototypes, Genesis 1 and 2 already in orbit, Bigelow has decided to skip another unmanned prototype and go straight for the habitable Sundancer module, launching as early as 2010.
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The European aerospace firm EADS Astrium revealed its plans for space tourism on Wednesday at a special event in Paris. The company also showed plans for a new space plane that it hopes will take customers up to space as early as 2012.
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The International Space Station is going to be a busy place. Right after Atlantis undocks, the next Soyuz mission, carrying the crew of Expedition 14, as well as a space tourist will launch on September 18. Iranian-American entrepreneur Anousheh Ansari will live on board the station for a week, partly as a tourist, and partly as a test subject for several research experiments. Four experiments are planned for Ansari, including two that test her blood, one to seek the cause of astronaut low-back pain, and a search for bacteria around the station.
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Scaled Composite's SpaceShipOne claimed the X-Prize when it reached an altitude of 100km for the second time in less than 2 weeks. Although this was a much simpler feat than reaching orbital altitude and velocities, many believed we were on the verge of a space tourism revolution. Virgin Galactic, one of the companies attempting to make a business out of suborbital flights recently unveiled details about SpaceShipTwo at a space tourism conference in London.
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