Leonard David has a short update on plans for the New Mexico Spaceport on LiveScience.com. He reports that that 90 percent of the site layout and design is now complete and that the first bid package will be ready within months. Officials expect to complete construction in 2010. The base will serve as a launch center for Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, which will carry tourists on suborbital flights.
Monthly Archive for February, 2008Page 4 of 11
Ten teams are now competing in the Google Lunar X PRIZE challenge, the race to land a robotic spacecraft on the moon.
The X Prize Foundation revealed that nine additional teams had joined the competition during a press conference this week at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. “It’s not just a new mission,” said X Prize CEO Peter Diamandis announced. “It’s a new way of doing business.”
The 10 teams are:
Aeronautics and Cosmonautics Romanian Association (ARCA): Based in Valcea, Romania and led by Dumitru Popescu, ARCA was also a contender in the Ansari X PRIZE.
Astrobotic: Team Astrobotic, led by Dr. William “Red” Whittaker, was formed to coordinate the efforts of Carnegie Mellon University, Raytheon Company and additional institutions.
Chandah: Chandah, meaning “Moon” in Sanskrit, was founded by Adil Jafry, an energy industry entrepreneur. He is now chairman and CEO of Tara, the largest independent retail electricity provider in Texas.
FREDNET: Headed by Fred J. Bourgeois III, this multi-national team is comprised of systems, software, and hardware developers who serve as the leaders and overall coordinators of an international group of Open Source developers, engineers, and scientists.
LunaTrex: Led by Pete Bitar, LunaTrex is comprised of several individuals, companies, and universities from all over the United States, some of whom were also competitors for the Ansari X PRIZE.
Micro-Space: Helmed by Richard Speck and based in Colorado, Micro-Space, Inc. has a 31-year history of producing world class, high tech products.
Odyssey Moon: The first team to register for the competition, Odyssey Moon is a private commercial lunar enterprise headquartered in the Isle of Man and founded by Dr. Robert Richards.
Quantum3: A U.S.-based team, Quantum3 is led by Paul Carliner, a senior executive in the aerospace industry.
Southern California Selene Group: According to team leader Harold Rosen, the approach taken by the Santa Monica Selene Group can be succinctly summarized as “an elegantly simple design that is relatively inexpensive to implement.”
Team Italia: Based in Italy and led by Prof. Amalia Ercoli-Finzi, Team Italia is a collaboration between several universities. The team is currently running a prototype of its system at Politecnico di Milano.
X Prize has full details about the competitors on its website. Space.com has a comprehensive story.
The opposition Liberal Party is calling upon the Nova Scotia government to actively support PlanetSpace’s plan to build a commercial spaceport on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia.
“The government should be saying, ‘What is it that we can do? Is there a role for the province to play to making it a reality? Is it feasible?’ Those kinds of questions need to be asked so that some economic activity will be happening,” said opposition leader Stephen McNeil said.
Meanwhile, a couple of Canadian newspapers also have weighed in on prospects of a spaceport at Cape Breton in Nova Scotia. The Cape Breton Post says that prospects for the spaceport receded after PlanetSpace failed to win a $170 million award from NASA’s COTS program.
The Halifax Chronicle Herald reports that PlanetSpace officials are hoping to get a piece of a $2.3 billion NASA procurement contract expected to be awarded later this year. However, the company believes prospects are good even if they don’t receive the funding.
Todayonline.com reports that Virgin Galactic may be looking at Singapore as a possible base for its suborbital tourism business within the next five years.
This move could pose a challenge for Space Adventures, which announced plans to build a spaceport in Singapore back two years ago. However, the Virginia-based company has only raised about half the funding for the facility, according to CEO Eric Anderson. He said the company hopes to raise the remainder of the funding by year’s end.
NASTAR PRESS RELEASE VIA PRNEWSWIRE
SOUTHAMPTON, Pa., Feb. 20 — Environmental Tectonics Corporation’s National Aerospace Training and Research (NASTAR) Center recently hosted 50 Accredited Space Agents (ASAs) from 14 countries a two-day Forum designed to update them on the Virgin Galactic project and to give them in-depth knowledge of the new NASTAR Center Air and Space Adventure Programs designed to be a “try before you buy” for prospective Space Travelers on board Virgin Galactic’s suborbital space flights.
Dennis Quaid, the actor who portrayed astronaut L. Gordon “Gordo” Cooper in The Right Stuff, may get a chance to fly into space for real.
PR-insider.com reports that the actor, who is qualified jet pilot, is interested in flying aboard Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo. Tourists will pay about $200,000 for the suborbital flights. Celebrities such as Victoria Principal have already signed up.
Orbital Sciences Corporation shares rose in the wake of NASA’s decision to award the Dulles, Virginia-based company a $170 million contract under its COTS program.
One analyst has predicted the contract could boost company income by 25 percent, potentially boosting earnings per share by about $6.
The COTS program is designed to encourage the development of commercial cargo and crew delivery vehicles for the International Space Station. Orbital plans to develop its Taurus II rocket, which would be launched from Wallops Island, Virginia. Orbital Sciences joins SpaceX of El Segundo, California in the COTS competition.
InsideBayArea.com has a report on the Zero-G flights that began operating out of Moffett Field in Mountain View, Calif. on February 16.
The news site reports that San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and his fiancee Jennifer Siebel were aboard the inaugural flight as the guests of a client that chartered the plane. The 90-minute flights, which fly weightless parabolas, cost about $3,500 per person.
The Las Vegas-based company plans to fly out of Moffett on a regular basis under a new agreement with NASA Ames. The next Zero-G flight in Mountain View is scheduled for July 12.
NASA’s decision to award $170 million in COTS funding to Orbital Sciences Corporation could prove to be a big boost to Virginia’s efforts to establish a commercial spaceport on Wallops Island.
The Dulles, Virginia-based company is leaning toward working with NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility and the state’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport to demonstrate its new Taurus II rocket by 2010. If the program is successful, it could make Virginia’s Eastern Shore a major commercial space center.
“This is a real opportunity to see that happen. It’s significant,” said Billie Reed, executive director of the Virginia Commercial Spaceflight Authority.
The Virginian-Pilot has more on the Virginia angle. Meanwhile, the Orlando Sentinel reports that although Orbital Sciences is leaning toward launching out of its home state, it has not closed the door on flights from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. KSC officials recently announced they were open to allowing private companies to build launch sites at the facility.
Despite coming out on the losing end of NASA’s COTS competition, PlanetSpace is going ahead with plans to create a commercial spaceport on Cape Breton in Nova Scotia.
The Chicago-based company has a two-pronged strategy: launching cargo and crews to the International Space Station from Florida and sending tourists on suborbital and point-to-point flights from Canada using its Silver Dart vehicle.
On Tuesday, the company learned that it lost out on a $171 million in NASA COTS funding to Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corporation. The COTS program is designed to encourage commercial development of crew and cargo vehicles for ISS.
“We will continue with the Silver Dart for point-to-point travel and space tourism,” PlanetSpace chairman Dr. Chirinjeev Kathuria said.
