Virgin’s Galactic has a 5-5 plan for its growth - order five additional spacecraft from Scaled Composites and turn a profit within five years beginning suborbital tourism launches in 2010.
“In the short term, we have firm orders for five spaceships and options for seven … We believe there is a very strong market,” said Virgin Galactic Director Alex Tai during an appearance at the Singapore Airshow.
Read the full Reuters story here. Public Radio also has a short piece about Virgin Galactic, which you can listen to here.
Outer space will rocket into reality as “the” getaway of this century, according to researchers at the University of Delaware and the University of Rome La Sapienza.
“In the twenty-first century, space tourism could represent the most significant development experienced by the tourism industry,” says Prof. Fred DeMicco, ARAMARK Chair at the University of Delaware’s Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional Management program.
You can read the full story at UDaily, the University of Delaware website.
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.
The first flight of SpaceShipTwo will be a family affair: Sir Richard Branson plans to take his 92-year-old father Ted and his 89-year-old mother Eve on the flight with him on the suborbital tourism jaunt.
Branson also will take his two children, Holly and Sam, on the inaugural flight, which is expected to take place in about 18 months. Also scheduled for the first flight: British Princess Beatrice, who is dating Virgin Galactic’s director of astronaut relations, Dave Clark.
Reporter Chris Bond looks at the current state of space tourism in this article in England’s Yorkshire Post newspaper. The article focuses mainly on Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic company, but it also includes a bold prediction from David Ashford of Bristol Spaceplanes:
“My projection is that we could have one million people going into space in the next 15 years. Once the programme gets underway costs will come down quite rapidly, perhaps down to as little as a few thousand pounds.”
Musician and sculpture Namira Salim is poised to become the first female Pakistani astronaut. She recently completed spaceflight training at a U.S. facility. She will be one of the first 100 suborbital space tourists flown by Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic company.
“I am not only proud to be the first Pakistani, but particularly proud to be the first female from Pakistan to have had such a phenomenal experience,” Salim told The Times of India.
For the complete article, click here.