Tag Archive for 'suborbital tourism'Page 2 of 3

Branson: Tourism Flights Set for Late 2010

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on May 18, 2008
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The Sunday Mirror quotes Richard Branson as saying that Virgin Galactic tourism flights are still about 30 months away. The British billionaire, speaking in Kenya where his company has rebuilt a school, said that he expects to begin flights in November 2010 after a rigorous test flight program for SpaceShipTwo and its White Knight carrier aircraft.

“NASA have [sic] lost three per cent of all their customers so our testing will be intense,” Branson said. “We are planning 50 test flights before we go up so we will be confident of getting it right.”

He plans to take his parents and children on the first tourism flight - but not his wife, Joan. “She’s not terribly keen on the idea of the kids coming up with me although I think she’s not too bothered about what might happen to me!” Branson joked.

Branson to Officiate Over First Space Wedding; Will Princess Beatrice be the Bride?

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on April 20, 2008
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Virgin Galactic founder Sir Richard Branson could preside over the first marriage in space aboard his SpaceShipTwo vehicle next year, The Daily Mail reports.

Although the pair is unidentified, the article notes that British Princess Beatrice, the 19-year-old daughter of Sarah Ferguson, wants to be the first royal married in space. Beatrice, fifth in line to the British throne, is involved with Dave Clark, who works in Virgin Galactic’s marketing department.

The couple can probably get a discount on the $200,000 per person flight, although Beatrice would have no trouble paying for it. The Mail reports that the club-hopping royal was recently looking at a £4.25 million ($8.5 million) four-bedroom, four-bathroom house in the tony London neighborhood of Belgravia.

Whoever the bride and groom are, they presumably would be married during the roughly five minutes of weightlessness they would enjoy during the suborbital flight, which will fly to an altitude of around 68 miles.

Presiding over weddings has become somewhat of a sideline for the brash, publicity savvy Branson. Last year, he became a minister for a day through an online church to officiate over the wedding of Virgin America marketing director Dimitrios Papadognonas and Coco Jones during a Virgin America Airlines flight from San Francisco to Las Vegas. The British billionaire also helped officiate over Google founder Larry Page’s wedding, which was held on Branson’s private Caribbean island.

It’s an interesting approach to nuptials. Weddings are usually about putting the couple up on a pedestal. One never upstages the bride and groom - especially the bride. Having a world famous, publicity-seeking billionaire presiding over the ceremony would tend to do precisely that. Unless, of course, you’re British royalty and outrank him.

On the other hand, who’s going to tell Richard Branson that you don’t want him to preside over the first wedding ever held in outer space aboard his own space plane? Probably no one. I suppose you would treat it as an honor and roll with it.

A Corporate Jet? That’s Soooo 2007…

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on April 14, 2008
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ArabianBusiness.com reports that a Dubai-based company has chartered an entire Virgin Galactic suborbital tourism flight for its top management.

The unnamed company has made a $500,000 deposit on the $1.2 million flight, which will carry six executives to an altitude of about 110 kilometers (69 miles). The flight is expected to take place in 2010. More details will be released in July.

Virgin Looks at Launch Sites in Australia

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on April 12, 2008
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AdelaideNow has a story about Virgin Galactic’s plans to establish a spaceport in Australia for suborbital tourism flights. The London-based company is considering launch sites in South Australia’s Outback and Victoria.

“We do have plans to launch from venues worldwide and Australia is in our long-term plans,” said Virgin Galactic’s Carolyn Wincer. “South Australia and Victoria would be good places to launch from.”

Will Rocketplane Global Soar or Stall?

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on April 9, 2008
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Investors and would-be space tourists are getting antsy about the prospects of Rocketplane Global, the Oklahoma company that plans to launch suborbital flights in two to three years.

Eliza Strickland has an excellent story at Wired.com about the problems plaguing Rocketplane, which originally hoped to begin flying its business jet-style space plane last year. Some investors and customers are looking at other options.

Strickland believes the company made a mistake by trying to tackle both suborbital tourism while also developing an orbital vehicle under NASA’s COTS program. The space agency ended the $207 million agreement in September after Rocketplane failed to come up with private financing to supplement NASA’s funding.

Rocketplane is also suffering from a lack of billionaire investors, such as Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson and Microsoft’s Paul Allen. Virgin also has suffered years of delay, soaring costs, and a fatal explosion that killed three workers at spaceplane builder Scaled Composites. However, investors are still confident about Branson’s suborbital venture.

Former astronaut John Herrington resigned as Rocketplane’s chief test pilot in December. Earlier in the year, a travel company sued Rocketplane alleging the space firm was focusing on the COTS and had abandoned it space plane.

Armadillo’s Carmack Reviews the Competition

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on April 7, 2008
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In a candid blog post, Armadillo Aerospace founder John Carmack offers a spirited defense of his company’s efforts at developing a commercial suborbital vehicle. He also provides candid assessments of his company’s major competitors. Carmack praises some, questions the viability of others, and dismisses one European company with two words.

Some quick highlights:

  • Virgin Galactic: “The safest bet for success.” However, the company is “spending a frightful amount of money, their schedule has slipped a lot, and the configuration is inherently much lower in operability than the others. The fatal explosion at Scaled [Composites] has also forever ended the ‘nitrous hybrids are inherently safe’ argument.”
  • XCOR: The Mojave, Calif.-based company is working with technology that is largely developed and seems likely to raise the money needed to fly its Lynx Mark 1 and Mark 2 vehicles.
  • Rocketplane Global: The Oklahoma company has already spent tens of millions of dollars without flying anything. Carmack doubts this will change.
  • SpaceDev: Although the company has done some fine work, its “hybrid-powered VTHL [Verticle Takeoff Horizontal Landing] DreamChaser is about the worst design for commercial suborbital flights.”
  • Blue Origin: The company is still shrouded in secrecy. Just what exactly is Jeff Bezos up to over there?
  • EADS Astrium: “Oh, please.”

Virgin Galactic Eyes Australia’s Gold Coast as Launch Site

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on March 31, 2008
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Sir Richard Branson literally dropped in on Bond University in Australia on Sunday, giving a wide-ranging speech to students there. The British billionaire made a surprise helicopter stop at the school, where he told students that Virgin Galactic would consider putting a spaceport along the Gold Coast for its suborbital tourism flights.

“I think the Gold Coast region is where we would take off from. You never know,” Branson said.

GoldCoast.com.au has the full story.

An Emerging “Horse Race” in Suborbital Tourism

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on March 31, 2008
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Jeff Foust takes a look at what one expert calls an emerging “horse race” between companies in the suborbital tourism arena over at The Space Review.

Although Virgin Galactic has gotten much of the attention, XCOR, Rocketplane Global, Armadillo Aerospace, EADS Astrium and other companies are competing to send tourists on the ultimate joy ride. They are all taking somewhat different approaches to this challenge.

“If it is a horse race, who will win the ultimate prize: not just the first vehicle to enter the market, but the one that wins the market in the long run?” Foust writes. “The diversity of technical approaches, from the takeoff and landing techniques to the number of passengers, makes any predictions difficult.”

Rand Simberg has a few comments about Jeff’s article over at Transterrestrial Musings that are worth a look.

More On XCOR’s Lynx Vehicle

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on March 30, 2008
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Rob Coppinger has posted detailed notes of his interview with XCOR’s chief engineer Dan DeLong on his Hyperbola blog. DeLong discusses the Lynx Mk. 1’s technical details and flight profile. He also provides information about the more powerful Mk. 2 version.

Virgin Galactic Sells First Charter Flight, Plans to Roll Out White Knight 2 in May

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on March 29, 2008
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Rob Coppinger has posted detailed notes of his January 24 conversation with Virgin Galactic commercial director Stephen Attenborough over at his Hyperbola blog on Flight Global. These notes are in addition to an article that Coppinger wrote examining the company’s business plan and SpaceShipTwo’s rising costs (now estimated at nearly $250 million).

Attenborough had some interesting things to say:

  • The company plans to roll the White Knight 2 carrier aircraft out of the factory in May;
  • Virgin gained 25 new customers in a one-month period from December to January;
  • An American has booked an entire flight as a charter (6 passengers);
  • Many of the space tourists are in their 40’s and 50’s and were inspired by the Apollo program;
  • Six customers have asked for refunds, two for health reasons and the rest due to “changing circumstances.”