A couple of brief items on the who’s going to space front:
An anonymous Auckland man who won a $5.2 million lottery prize plans to pluck down $200,000 for a suborbital Virgin Galactic flight, the Waikato Times reports. He was on a bike ride when he stopped for a drink and bought the winning lottery ticket on a whim.
“People have always told me that you can’t win these big prizes - but now I’m the lucky bugger this week”, he told the paper. “I also want to look at travelling in real style - by booking a trip into space. It would be great to one of the first Kiwis to make that trip.”
Meanwhile, Babylon 5 star Bruce Boxleitner says the price would have to come down first before he books a Virgin flight, PR-insider reports.
“I wish they’d hurry it along and make it cheaper. I’d love to do it, but it’s like $200,000 per person,” he said. “We should get a Screen Actors Guild ride going! I have a feeling it’ll be the Scream Actors Guild.”
Boxleitner is on the Board of Directors of the National Space Society, a non-profit space advocacy group with close ties to the British tourism company. The society’s Executive Director, George Whitesides, also works for Virgin Galactic; he and his wife Loretta will honeymoon aboard one of the suborbital flights. However, this apparently isn’t helping Boxleitner get a discount.
Emergency workers from Hall Ambulance are being honored for their response to the fatal explosion last summer at the Scaled Composites’ facility in Mojave, the Bakersfield Californian reports.
The rescue personnel responded to the scene soon after the accident, not knowing whether another explosion was imminent. Two Scaled employees were dead and four others injured, one of whom later died after being airlifted to a local hospital. “One patient was covered with little black carbon fibers sticking out of his body,” the paper reports.
The personnel being honored by the California Ambulance Association’s Stars of Life program in Sacramento this week include:
Chris Beucher, flight medic
Samuel Swanson, paramedic
Heather Taylor, paramedic
Sean Eddy, paramedic field supervisor
Brent Wible, paramedic
Timothy Reynolds, paramedic
Jeanette Green, flight nurse
Michael Knutson, EMT
Beucher said he is honored to receive the recognition. “TV portrays it as six months later you meet the victim in his backyard and have a barbecue,” he told the paper. “More often than not we take heat from people.”
The State of California issued five citations against Scaled Composites and issued fines of more than $25,000. The company has appealed the citations and fines.
Leonard David has an interesting piece over at LiveScience.com on the possibility that Virgin Galactic will snag a piece of NASA’s suborbital launch business.
The American space agency recently issued two Request for Information solicitations concerning human suborbital spaceflight. NASA’s Science Mission Directorate is looking to fly payloads and researchers on private spacecraft.
David reports that NASA will review solicitations early next year with the intent of beginning a pilot program around 2010-11.
The York University newspaper Excalibur has an article on the future of space exploration, which it sees in the form of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo and other tourist vehicles.
“Popular opinion sees space flight as a sidebar to human development. Even NASA, with their use of aging, decrepit and obsolete shuttles, appears to believe the same. But fear not, for our savior has arrived in the form of a virgin. Well, the Virgin Galactic program that is. Virgin has taken the initiative in commercializing space travel as a luxury for those who can afford it,” Brent Rose writes.
Leonard David has a report on the National Aerospace Training and Research Center (NASTAR), which is helping to train pilots and passengers for upcoming suborbital tourism flights. The Pennsylvania center has state-of-the-art equipment, including a centrifuge. It counts Virgin Galactic as one of its clients.
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.
SpaceShipTwo designer Burt Rutan is recovering from open heart surgery, according to a report by MSNBC’s Alan Boyle. The 64-year-old Rutan had heart surgery at UCLA Medical Center on February 7. He expects recovery to take about three months.
Rutan is leading Scaled Composite’s efforts to build a suborbital tourism vehicle for Virgin Galactic. Initial test flights are schedule for later this year, with commercial flights occurring as early as 2010.
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.
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.