Where in the world is Richard Branson? He's in the Mojave Desert today, for the official dedication of Spaceport America, the base and building for all the fun of Virgin Galactic.
Here's the thing, though—Spaceport America has already been "open" now since May, when their three-hour tours began. Today was just all the official pomp and circumstance, plus a little show-off flight from SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo. ]]>
The United States doesn't really have a space travel program any more, inasmuch as our leaders found better and more inspirational programs to fund than ones that have astronauts literally reaching for the stars (e.g. empty rural airports in the home states of powerful Senators).
The problem is that NASA still has engineers and scientists who need to run experiments in low-gravity and no-gravity conditions, and they'd kind of like to keep doing some of those. So agency officials looked around, scratched their collective heads, and checked if there was still anyone still doing that space flight thing.
And that's the short version of how Virgin Galactic became NASA's official sub-contracter. The press release is here, and if you click through make sure you at least read the bolded quote in the middle of the release. It's the longest string of words that mean the least that you'll ever encounter.]]>
After much scientific testing, complicated measuring and grueling research, we've come to the very important conclusion that it is impossible to think Virgin Group main man Sir Richard Branson is anything but extremely awesome. C'mon—the man kite-boards with naked models, says he wants to build a spaceship and then actually does it, saves the world daily with his many charities, and yet still has time to sit down with us for a quick chat.
We last caught up with Sir Richard onboard Virgin America's inaugural flight to Chicago-O'Hare. As for all other monumental occasions in his family of Virgin brands, Branson donned a fun costume and parades around for the cameras, bursting with vim and vigor. This got us thinking. What costume, after all these years of dressing wacky for promotional stunts, does Richard really wish he could wear? So we asked him. ]]>
Planning to hit happy hour tonight after work? We have something for toast to: the opening of Spaceport America, which represents yet another step closer to making space tourism a possibility. The Spaceport, located in the Mojave Desert in New Mexico—Albuquerque is 150 miles to the south—only just completed its runway in October and is already open for public tours.
This comes at the most opportune time; just as the sun is going down on the NASA space program and the space shuttles retired, Virgin Galactic's new wave spaceships enter the spotlight.
The AP has the news first, of course, that Virgin Galactic's facilities will host the first tour this Friday, a tour aimed at "giving guests an up close look at the spaceflight facilities before operations begin," which is later this year if all continues to go according to plan. ]]>
Obviously "affordable" is a relative concept when it comes to space tourism. But we've been telling you for a while to keep your fingers crossed for competition between Virgin Galactic and potential rivals, if only because that way we can all dream about one day maybe flying in a sub-orbital. Prices aren't going to drop in the next few years for a bunch of reasons, from the fact that Virgin Galactic is the only company building a spaceport—which kind of puts a damper on competition—to the simple high costs of flying people into space.
Even at this early stage, though, serious people are beginning to envision how space tourism might become more available to more people. Virgin Galactic's former President Will Whitehorn just gave a far-reaching talk on the topic, and he predicted that ticket prices would drop from their current price of $200,000 to below $100,000. ]]>
Six months after its first solo flight—coverage and background here and here—the Virgin Galactic VSS Enterprise passed another milestone last Friday. The sub-orbital spaceship set a new 14:30 minute record after being dropped by its mothership, gliding over the Mohave Desert while test pilots confirmed that everything was working. This was the spaceship's fifth release, and things continue to progress nicely.
Eventually tests will start to incorporate the craft's space-age hybrid rocket motor, which thus far has only been tested on the ground. Those trials are going to begin over the next few months, with 2012 still the target for when commercial space tourism becomes a reality. By then the New Mexico Spaceport America, being built for both vertical and horizontal takeoffs, will also be ready.]]>
Now that the Academy Awards are over and the celebrities have fled to their vacation homes to bask in the glory of a owning a statuette or wallow in self-pity for losing, we can talk about what everybody at the Oscars got regardless: the swag bag. Winners, losers...everybody gets gifted with free stuff! Last year's gift bag was valued at $91,000; will this year's top it?
The answer to that is YES, and in only the first item! Natalie Portman, et al., were handed a chance to go to space with Virgin Galactic along with a scale model of the craft. The orbital space flight gift is worth $200,000. We wonder who'll redeem that voucher? Colin Firth in spaaaaccceee... ]]>