Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Cover Story

Wanted: an Emirati space tourist

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ANY Emirati with $35 million to spare is being encouraged by Space Adventures to contact the orbital space flight company to join them on a mission to the International Space Station (ISS).

CEO and president of Space Adventures Eric Anderson, who was in Dubai for the recent WTTC Summit, told TTN’s in an exclusive interview that the company would particularly welcome an Emirati recruit to go orbital.

“The kind of astronaut I’m looking for is someone who would go into orbit – spend two weeks on the International Space Station,” said Anderson.

“They would have to have a reasonable level of fitness; they will have to find a little bit of time in their schedule because there are about 12 to 14 weeks of training required.”

Space Adventures is targeting private individuals, business people, and has spoken to organisations and sectors of the government while here. “We are just starting discussions about it now,” said Anderson.

So far the company has had five private citizens visit the ISS, and the sixth, video game programmer and designer and Texas resident Richard Garriott, is due to take off from the steppes of the Kazakhstan space port on October 12.

“Garriott is unique as he is going to be the world’s second generation astronaut - his father is Owen Garriott is a former NASA astronaut,” he said.

Although the focus of the company is on orbital flights, they also offer sub-orbital flights costing around $200,000 for the blast. Rockets boost passengers 100 kilometres up to where space begins. After the engines shutdown, participants experience up to five minutes of continuous weightlessness, and can see Earth below.

Other space companies – Virgin Galactic for example, have signed up five Emiratis so far for sub-orbital flights. UAE national Adnan Al Maimani, a Space Adventures client, was the first to sign up and is on a waiting list for a sub-orbital flight.

“Sub-orbital is really the edge of an orbital flight. We think that if someone is going to pay $200,000 for a few minutes on the edge of space, we would love to see more people doing it. If someone is keen to go that far they possibly really want to go to the space station. It’s a teaser. So we are very supportive of sub orbital flights and we don’t really think of others as opposition,” Anderson said.

Space Adventures recently acquired another company called Zero Gravity. “We have come to realise over the last couple of years that this is the best space experience for the rest of us, so to speak. The Zero Gravity is a $4,000 per person space experience. It is not a space flight per se, but it is a two hour flight in a specially outfitted Boeing 727 during which participants have short periods of weightlessness,” he said.

“Zero gravity flights are really a much better option than sub-orbital because you get more weightlessness and you are in an FAA approved aircraft. It is also a lot less expensive.”

Another advantage of zero gravity flights was that these fly out of regular airports anywhere in the world. So what if we want to bring it to Dubai?

“Absolutely, we could bring it right here. We would have to have a group of committed customers before we did that, but we may well do that at some point,” he said.

The United States, Russia, Japan, Canada and Europe share the ISS international project. Construction started in November 1998, and is scheduled for completion in 2010. It orbits at an average altitude of 354 kilometres at an inclination of 51.6 degrees to the equator and at 17,000 miles an hour.

by Cheryl Mandy

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Virgin Galactic seeks space agents

Virgin Galactic will be looking to appoint more Middle East sales agents for its sub-orbital space flights at ATM.

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Virgin Galactic will be inviting travel agents to boldly go where no travel agent has gone before at ATM 2008.

Travel agents will have the opportunity to apply to sell space travel in partnership with the Virgin Galactic Accredited Space Office in Dubai, with selected applicants joining a shortlist from which the chosen sales agents will be announced.

"Travel agents play an integral role in the Virgin Galactic distribution process. As a trusted advisor and source of information for their clients, we are seeking the best agencies to sell spaceflights," said Carolyn Wincer, head of astronaut sales, Virgin Galactic.

"We want to create a network of agents in the Middle East who are knowledgeable, well informed and know how to deliver the highest levels of service when selling unique travel experiences."

Virgin Galactic has already sold more than 200 tickets globally and at US $200,000 per ticket has received $30 million in deposits and a projected future income of $45 million. Test flights are due to take place this summer with the first commercial flights taking off by the end of 2009.

"We anticipate finalising the appointment of agents before the end of the year and commencing the all important ‘accredited sales agent' training through the region.

It takes a very talented and skilled travel consultant to sell a trip to space," said Sharon Garrett, head of space marketing and PR, at Dubai's Virgin Galactic Accredited Space Office (Sharaf Travel).

Saturday, May 3, 2008

Dubai firm becomes first to charter space flight

An unnamed Dubai-based company has become the first in the world to charter a space flight for its top management.

'I cannot reveal any details about the company or the deal, other than (saying that) the flight they chartered can take up to six passengers but they might end up flying only two people,' The National newspaper quoted Sharon Garrett, the head of space marketing and public relations at Virgin Galactic's Dubai office, as saying.

She said the company deposited 1.8 million dirhams ($500,000) last week to charter one of Virgin's commercial aircraft

A part of Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Group, Virgin Galactic is offering sub-orbital space flights and, in the future, orbital space flights to the paying public.

Virgin Galactic's mission is to fly passengers who are not professional astronauts to an altitude slightly over 100 km and allow them to experience weightlessness.

The first flight is planned for 2009.

According to the newspaper, the two-and-a-half-hour trip, on SpaceShipTwo, as booked by the company, will take off from the Mohave Desert Spaceport in California.

The spaceship will be attached to a base ship known as WhiteKnightTwo, which, after a runway take-off, will reach an altitude of 15,240 metres.

At that point, the SpaceShipTwo will be released and its own rocket will blast it to 4,000 kmph, three times the speed of sound, to reach 109,728 metres.

Once in space the passengers will be allowed out of their seats for four minutes to float around in zero gravity.

After seven minutes in space, the craft will return to earth, using a wing feathering technology, which will help reduce the intense heat generated by re-entering the atmosphere, before making a runway landing.

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I pronounce you spaceman and wife: Branson to be the first man to marry a couple in space

By NATHAN KAY

Virgin Galactic boss Sir Richard Branson is planning to set yet another record – by becoming the first man to marry a couple in space.

The 58-year-old billionaire intends to conduct a ceremony 70 miles above the Earth on the first Galactic sub-orbital flight next year.

He has already officiated at one wedding in mid-air. Last year he was ordained for the day in an online church to marry Virgin America marketing director Dimitrios Papadognonas and Coco Jones on a Virgin flight from San Francisco to Las Vegas.

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Record breaker: Sir Richard

 

He also helped officiate at the wedding of Google co-founder Larry Page on his private island, Necker, in the Caribbean.

A spokesman for Virgin Galactic told The Mail on Sunday: "We have had two bookings involving marriage, one to get married in space and the other for the couple to have their honeymoon in space.

"It is possible that Richard could obtain a licence to conduct the marriage."

The couple who have booked in for a honeymoon on the £100,000-a-ticket maiden flight are Virgin Galactic adviser George Whitesides and his new wife, Loretta Hidalgo.

The Virgin Galactic space project is progressing at a dramatic rate and customers will take part in the first test flights this summer.

In January, Branson unveiled a model of SpaceShipTwo, the vehicle he promises will turn space tourism into reality.

It is designed to hitch a lift on an aircraft to 50,000ft before blasting into the outer atmosphere. image

So far 200 people have paid for the sub-space experience. Princess Beatrice, whose partner Dave Clark works in the marketing department of Virgin Galactic, has said she plans to be the first Royal in space.

Former Dallas actress Victoria Principal, the designer Philippe Starck and wheelchair-bound Professor Stephen Hawking have also paid for trips.

The spokesman said: "Customers will have a two-hour flight, go up to 70 miles above the Earth and experience amazing views of the planet, G forces and weightlessness after a three-day training programme."

Branson has been involved in a number of world record-breaking attempts.

In 1986, he set a record for crossing the Atlantic in a powerboat. And in 1991 he crossed the Pacific in a balloon, breaking all existing records.

Friday, April 25, 2008

North Norfolk man's space dream

"EVERYBODY has a dream, mine happens to be expensive."

The words of Richard Burr, the north Norfolk man set to join an elite rank by becoming a 'space tourist' at the eye watering cost of $200,000 - around £100,000.

The 52-year-old property developer and businessman from Aylsham sits at number 205 on the list of people getting ready to board the first Virgin Galactic flights, which will allow ordinary folk to become astronauts.

Mr Burr has already stumped up £75,000 of the cash but still has something of a wait.

Those taking part will board a horizontally launched purpose built 'mothership' aircraft, which carries with it the spaceship, before being flown to a height where the spaceship can be detached and propelled into orbit. Two pilots and six passengers will be in the spaceship on each flight.

In January, Mr Burr travelled to New York to meet with other prospective astronauts, Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson and to attend the launch of the final design plans for the aircraft and spaceship.

The process now should see the finished aircraft and spaceship “rolled out” by July, tests conducted for several months, licences awarded and the first commercial flights by the end of next year, said Mr Burr.

“Because I am not top of the list I would expect to be up in early 2010, although that could change of course according to the process taking longer, or people dropping out.

“It's very exciting of course, but I wouldn't say I was excited in a schoolboy way, although that will probably come as it nears.

“The prospect of looking out of the window and seeing the stars and the earth is an incredible thought.

“People will think it is a huge amount of money, but bear in mind that if you look back to the first trans Atlantic flights, people were paying what would now be around £30,000 to get to America.”

The trip itself will be made from New Mexico and will last about two hours, made up of an aircraft climb of an hour, a spaceship boost into space in less than two minutes, a 'zero g' weightlessness experience of four to five minutes, a re-entry into the atmosphere of two minutes and a glided landing of 50 minutes.

Virgin Galactic have stated they hope to fly 500 people in the first year and 50,000 in the first 10 years.

Visit www.virgingalactic.com for more information.

Arab company charters space craft in world first

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A Dubai-based Arab company has become the first ever in the world to charter a space craft for its top management, ArabianBusiness.com can reveal.

The company last week handed over $500,000 as a deposit to Virgin Galactic, to charter one of the company’s commercial spacecrafts.

Details of the company are likely to be made public in July this year. Sources suggest the two hour flight in space will take place some time in 2010.

The total deal, the first ever of its kind, is worth $1.2 million. It is understood the deal was done through Sharaf Travel, Virgin Galactic’s UAE agent.

Virgin Galactic is expected to begin its commercial space flights next year, with tickets for the first 100 passengers going for $200,000 per passenger.

The Virgin Galactic experience involves boarding SpaceShipTwo which is attached to a mother-ship known as WhiteKnightTwo.

Following a run-way take-off the space craft will climb to an altitude of 50,000 feet where the spaceship will be released and the rocket ignited.

The rocket burn acceleration powers the spaceship to the speed of sound in just 10 seconds, and over three times the speed of sound in under 30 seconds.

The G-force surge will push the clients back into their seats as they head into the darkness of space to an altitude of 110 kilometres above the earth's surface.

When the rocket motor shuts down, all passengers, who by this stage are officially ‘astronauts', will experience the silence of space, and majestic views of earth as they float around the large cabin in zero gravity for four minutes.

The spaceship returns to earth, passing back through the atmosphere using a unique wing feathering technology to ensure stability and to minimize heat intensity, before making a normal runway landing.

In total the space flight will last for around two hours.

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Entrepreneur talks space travel

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Greg Olsen, scientist, businessman and astronaut, came to the College on March 26 to tell his story in the New Library Auditorium.

Olsen nearly flunked out of high school, failing trigonometry and graduating with an overall average of 70. Coaxed into college, Olsen received his Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering and a master's degree in physics from Fairleigh Dickinson University. A doctorate in materials science from the University of Virginia followed afterwards.

From 1972-1983, Olsen worked as a research scientist for RCA labs. It was here where he got the idea to start his first company, Epitaxx.

"I had no background in business … until 1983 when I got the idea to start this tech company," Olsen said.

With $1.5 million in startup funds, the company focused on making fiber-optic detectors and soon employed up to 55 people and made $5 million a year. The company was bought out by Japanese company Nippon Sheet Glass for $12 million in 1990.

"In 1990 everybody thought Japan was going to rule the world economically," Olsen said. "We all hear about India and China now … Anybody who thinks the U.S. is gonna get left in the dust, just remember what happened in 1990."

Olsen started his second company, called Sensors Unlimited, in 1992. Sensors Unlimited was sold for $600 million in 2000 but Olsen bought the company back a year later for $6 million and later re-sold it for $60 million in 2003.

It was in June of that year that Olsen got the idea to travel into space.

"The inspiration to go to the International Space Station (ISS) came from this," Olsen said, holding up his coffee cup. "Every morning you can find me at the Starbucks on Nassau Street (in Princeton) reading the paper."

It was a chance reading during one particular Starbucks trip that introduced Olsen to Dennis Tito and Mark Shuttleworth, the first two private citizens to board the ISS.

"Have you ever had that feeling where you've seen something and you said to yourself, 'I have to do this?'" Olsen asked.

By April of 2004 Olsen was in Russia training for his spaceflight. In June of that year he was disqualified for having a black spot on his lung.

"That was a devastating experience for me," Olsen said.

He got clearance from American doctors, and pressed the issue with the Russian doctors until he was allowed back into the program in May 2005.

"By February I didn't think that I would get to fly into space, but I just kept at it," Olsen said.

In October of that year, he and two other astronauts launched from Russia.

Olsen showed videos of his trip on the ISS with instructions on how to drink water and eat food. He also demonstrated basic properties of physics using a floating notebook.

Of his experience, Olsen said he was happy with how everything turned out.

"I don't consider myself an astronaut, but I feel like I was properly trained," he said.

Currently, Olsen is the chief executive officer of GHO Ventures and, in addition to managing a winery in South Africa and a ranch in Montana, he funds "Angel Projects," which are startup companies that he believes show promise.

"I love startups," Olsen said. "I thought, why don't I try investing in others?"

By Cameron Prince

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Next Space Tourist Takes Break from Spaceflight Training

By Tariq Malik

NEW YORK - The next space tourist bound for the International Space Station (ISS) is taking a breather from spaceflight training as he prepares to ride a Russian rocket toward the orbiting laboratory later this year.

American computer game developer Richard Garriott, 46, has returned to the U.S. after an intense six weeks of Russian classes and Soyuz spacecraft training for his planned October flight to the ISS. The one-month rest comes between a series of trips to Russia's cosmonaut training center in Star City, where he and backup Nik Halik have been wading through the intricacies of Soyuz spaceflight.

"In the Soyuz, all of the buttons and things are labeled in Russian, so you need to be able to read and understand a few technical words," Garriott told SPACE.com Friday, adding that he spent four hours each day learning the new language. "There's no question that learning Russian is a little bit of a challenge."

Based in Austin, Texas, Garriott is paying about $30 million to fly to the ISS with two professional astronauts in October under an agreement between Russia's Federal Space Agency and the Virginia-based tourism firm Space Adventures, which brokered the flight. He plans to conduct Earth observations and protein crystal growth experiments during his mission and launched an educational contest for British students to devise their own tests that he could perform.

In between language lessons, Garriott and Halik spent four hours each day studying Soyuz spacecraft training manuals and exploring Russia's Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center.

"One of the things that I didn't know was there while we were kicking around was that they have a wonderful planetarium," Garriott said, adding that he and Halik hope to visit the planetarium during their next training session. "It's a surprisingly open place."

The two entrepreneurs were careful to keep out of restricted zones and adhere to training protocol. Russian space officials recently replaced South Korea's first astronaut choice, artificial intelligence expert Ko San, for an April 8 launch due to regulation infractions. Ko's backup, female mechanical engineer Yi So-yeon, will take his place during the upcoming spaceflight.

Halik, 38, is an Australian entrepreneur who is paying $3 million to serve as Garriott's backup and experience genuine spaceflight training.

"Though Nik and I had not really known each other before training together in Star City, it turns out we've lived very parallel lives," said Garriott, adding that both he and his backup have taken adventure trips to Antarctica, rode aboard submersibles down to the wreck of the Titanic, experienced weightless on aircraft and flown Russian MiG jets. "Because we have that same adventurous spirit and similar background, training together has been actually really convenient and also given us a well-rounded opportunity to share this experience together."

Garriott developed the Ultima computer game series and co-founded the Origins Systems computer game company as well as the North American branch of the online game developer NCsoft. He hopes to spend his month off from training to catching up with his work. But, Garriott added, he did happen to be in Russia training for spaceflight in early February, when his most recent game "Tabula Rasa" hit stores in Moscow in its Russian packaging.

"Getting a chance to sit down with the players was actually great fun for me and hopefully they enjoyed it as well," Garriott said.

Garriott has expressed an interest in paying an extra $15 million to stage the first spacewalk by a private spaceflyer, though whether the activity could come together in time for his flight is up in the air. He has already been fitted for his Russian Sokol spacesuit, the partial pressure garment that he will wear during launch and landing, but not one worthy of a spacewalk.

"Of course I would love to do it if it could be done," said Garriott, adding that he hopes to put together some sort of simple, feasible science experiment in case it opportunity arises.

Garriott will be the sixth paying visitor to the ISS, but the first American second-generation spaceflyer to reach orbit. His father, Owen Garriott, is a retired NASA astronaut who flew aboard the U.S. Skylab space station and shuttle Columbia, and will serve as chief scientist for the coming spaceflight.

"One of the more interesting aspects of working with my father on this flight is what an appreciation it's given me for the challenges that my dad faced during his time with NASA," the younger Garriott said. "The sense of urgency to get all your ducks in a row and get things lined up appropriately has been high."

Richard Garriott is chronicling his spaceflight training and mission at his personal Web site: www.richardinspace.com.

Love in Zero Gravity

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Boing Boing fan Sarah McKinley Oakes says,
This past weekend I went on a Zero-G flight out of Las Vegas, and was thrilled to see that they use shots of your flight in the training video (I loudly said 'I know her' and then realized that that was, of course, a lie). Thought you'd like to know, it was very cool.

While floating around in no gravity, my boyfriend proposed.

It was great.
Congratulations, Sarah! Link to their lovely Flickr set.

source

Space Adventures' Orbital Spaceflight Client, Richard Garriott, Announces Educational Partnership with Challenger Center for Space Science Education

Richard Garriott is a preeminent game developer and son of NASA Skylab Astronaut Owen Garriott.  As the next civilian to fly into space, Richard plans to follow the lead of Educator Astronaut Barbara Morgan, STS-118, through interactive lessons that will motivate and inspire students.  His flight is currently scheduled for lift-off to the International Space Station on October 12, 2008.  Richard is a former student of Dr. June Scobee Rodgers, the Founding Chairman of Challenger Center for Space Science Education and widow of that flight's Commander, Dick Scobee.  After the tragic loss of the Challenger space shuttle crew, Richard worked with Dr. Scobee Rodgers on the design of the first Challenger Learning Center.  There are now over 50 Challenger Learning Centers in the United States, Canada, England and South Korea.  Richard will continue the mission of Teacher-in-Space Christa McAuliffe, as did Barbara Morgan, as he delivers activities and challenges from the International Space Station.  Garriott's flight activities have the potential to reach children across the globe as he reaches out from the first Challenger Learning Center off the planet.

Garriott plans to spend time before, during and after his flight working with students, teachers and the 50 Challenger Learning Centers located in the United States, England, Canada and South Korea. He plans to conduct a series of interactive webcasts associated with his spaceflight training in Russia; conduct podcasts discussing activities related to both his training and spaceflight; hold amateur ham radio conversations with students during his flight; and perform experiments that can be replicated by students using everyday objects to demonstrate important concepts in physics. Students can predict what might happen during the same experiment in the microgravity (weightless) environment of space. 

Dr. June Scobee Rodgers plans to present lessons to students over the web in preparation for Richard Garriott’s flight. “Like father, like son,” says Dr. Rodgers, commenting on her former student's plans. “Dr. Owen Garriott also taught student science lessons from space on his Skylab mission, as Richard plans to do on his flight.” Richard Garriott’s experiments, webcasts, and podcasts about his flight will be available on the Challenger Center’s national website, www.challenger.org.

Challenger Center for Space Science Education was founded in 1986 by the families of the astronauts of the space shuttle Challenger 51-L mission. It is dedicated to the educational spirit of that mission and impacts over 300,000 students and 25,000 teachers each year. Challenger Learning Center programs at 50 centers around the world continue the crew's mission of engaging teachers and students in science, mathematics, engineering and technology. To locate a Challenger Learning Center near you, visit www.challenger.org.

Monday, March 31, 2008

Explorer Anousheh Ansari brought space down to Earth

 

She is the first to sniff space and declare that it smelt like a burnt almond cookie.

In September, 2006, Anousheh Ansari became the world's first private female explorer and, without realizing it, the voice of the quotidian observer of the unknown.

She brought space down to Earth.

The first Iranian-born person in space described the difficulty of washing her hair in zero gravity and of her "internal organs doing a cha-cha inside my belly" when the Russian space capsule, Soyuz TMA-9, started its orbit of Earth before docking for an eight-day visit to the International Space Station.

 

"What happened with my blog and all the attention I was getting was unexpected," she says during a recent visit to the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto. The daily blog, the first to be written from space, received more than 50 million hits and elicited comments from people around the world.

"A lot of people saw hope," she says. "They were looking at me as one of the most unlikely candidates to be able to do something like this."

In fact, her journey into space is less impressive than the one that got her to the launch pad.

Five years after the Iranian revolution in 1979, she and her younger sister immigrated to the United States with their parents, who wanted their children to get a good education. When they arrived, they lived with an aunt for several months. They were not a wealthy family. "When we left, we basically left with nothing," she says. "We just packed our bags and came."

The transition to American life was not easy. A teenager of 17, she didn't speak a word of English. "Teenagers are a species all by themselves," she says. "They can be cruel, not warm and welcoming at times. I was just in high school to study. I just went to classes and did what I had to do."

She even had to shelve the idea of becoming an astronaut, which had been a dream from childhood. "When I came here, I thought to myself, 'I can be an astronaut now. I'm in America.' That's what I wanted to do - study astrophysics and become an astronaut ... [but] I wasn't a U.S. citizen and I figured, 'Well, what are my chances of becoming an astronaut?' I knew it was not very high, and I knew I had to study something so that I could get a job immediately out of college to support myself and help my family."

So she completed a degree in electrical and computer engineering followed by a master's in electrical engineering. "I had read that electrical engineering and telecommunications, especially, were a grow- ing field," she offers with a shrug in her finely tailored clothing.

In the early 1990s, she persuaded her husband, Hamid, and her brother-in-law, Amir, to help her start Telecom Technologies with their combined savings.

In 2001, the company was bought by Sonus Networks for about half a billion dollars.

Ms. Ansari had still not lost her passion for space. "When we had employee meetings, I would make all my managers dress up in Star Wars costumes, and they would enter the room with Star Wars music playing," she says with only a suggestion of a smile breaking her serious composure.

It was a meeting with Peter Diamandis, chairman and founder of the X Prize Foundation, a non-profit educational organization, that would lead to her space travel. Mr. Diamandis was seeking funding for a competition that encouraged entrepreneurial initiatives to build the first non-government piloted spacecraft. He had heard of her fascination with space.

Ms. Ansari and her family decided to be title sponsors with a donation of $10-million (U.S.). Subsequently renamed the Ansari X Prize, the money was awarded in 2004 to Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and well-known aviation designer Burt Rutan for their Space-

ShipOne.

The family also announced a partnership with Space Adventures Ltd. and the Russian Federal Space Agency to create commercial space vehicles. To understand the training required for space travel, and as a back-up to a civilian adventurer who was scheduled to fly, Ms. Ansari spent six months at Star City, the Russian cosmonaut facility outside Moscow. Already fluent in English, French and her native tongue, Farsi, she had to learn Russian. "Only three weeks before the flight, they told me that the person who was supposed

to fly failed his medical exam, and I had the opportunity

to do it. It was a complete

surprise."

The flight cost her $20-million. "The most memorable moment was when I first saw Earth from Soyuz. It was very emotional. I was crying," she says. "It was beautiful, an amazing image. It has been a year and a half, and I can see it, still, when I am telling you about it. There's almost a warmth coming from Earth. It is sort of glowing, and it's surrounded by darkness. It gives you a certain energy. You can feel that it is alive."

Since her return to Earth, Ms. Ansari has continued her upward trajectory with a guest appearance on Oprah Winfrey's television show and other talk shows, frequent invitations to speak and a memoir under way.

Commercial space travel will have a profound effect on the way people see the planet, she says. "When you're up there, you do look at the world differently. You do see a lot of possibilities for people working together. You see it as one. You're not looking at your country or your hometown. You're looking at Earth."

In 2006, with her family, she started another company, Prodea Systems, which is developing products for "the digital home" that would integrate services through the television, as one example. "The goal is that new technologies and services would be accessible to everyone, regardless of their technological savvy," she explains.

While her motive is entrepreneurial, it is more social than economic, she says. "Technology doesn't recognize any difference in race or religion or age ... and it has made us closer. It has cut through language barriers and distances."

Her schedule is hectic, the 41-year-old admits. "I spend 10 or 12 hours in the office working, and I think, 'Why am I doing this?' And I remember that I am here for a reason. I have a purpose. ...

"I think that 20 or 30 years from now, people will look back at this time as a great era of evolution for our species."

SARAH HAMPSON

Source

Friday, March 28, 2008

Space planes 'to meet big demand'

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Aerospace giant EADS says it will need a production line of rocket planes to satisfy the space tourism market.

The European company's Astrium division, makers of the Ariane rocket, has plans for a commercial vehicle to take ticketed passengers above 100km.

Its market assessment suggests there could be 15,000 people a year prepared to part with substantial sums of money for the ride of a lifetime.

Astrium anticipates it be will be producing about 10 planes a year.

"To satisfy the market you will need more planes than you think, because once there is regular operation, the price will decrease which means there will be more customers," Robert Laine, chief technical officer (CTO) of the pan-European company, told BBC News.

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"It will develop towards a classical aeronautical business model. Someone will build the planes; somebody will operate them; somebody will sell the tickets; somebody will provide the accommodation - like any tourism."

The first tickets will retail in the region of 150,000-200,000 euros (£115,000-160,000).

Mr Laine was speaking in London at the Institution of Engineering and Technology, where he was delivering the 99th Kelvin Lecture.

Astrium does not intend to run a space tourism marketing operation itself. Rather, it intends simply to supply vehicles to those who will.

And although production numbers will not be in the same league as, say, Airbus or Boeing, they will be significant nonetheless.

Mr Laine said development of Astrium's rocket plane was proceeding apace.

Wind tunnel testing has proven the aerodynamic shape; and the vehicle's Romeo rocket engine which will take the plane above 100km has been ignited for burns that have run up to 31 seconds.

The engine will be using the combustion of a liquid oxygen-methane propellant to provide the more than 1km/s punch needed to break through the top of the Earth's atmosphere.

About 50% of the mass of the plane at take-off would be fuel.

The intention is to produce a vehicle that seats five individuals - one pilot and four passengers.

The production model will use normal jet engines to take off and climb to 12km.

From there, the rocket engine will kick the vehicle straight up, taking it beyond 60km in just 80 seconds. By the time the rocket shuts down, the craft should have sufficient velocity to carry it above 100km - into space.

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As the plane then begins to fall back to Earth, the pilot will use small thrusters to control its attitude, keeping the plane's belly flat to the Earth.

"If you enter with the belly flat down then you expose a very large radius to the aerodynamic flux and that contains the temperature to an acceptable limit," explained Mr Laine.

"We calculate the temperature will be less than 100C on the surface of the wings."

When the plane slows to subsonic speed in the atmosphere, it will use its jet engines again to return to the airport.

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The total journey time will be about one-and-a-half hours.

Mr Laine said the planes would have about a 10-year lifetime. They would be designed for ease of maintenance, with an operational schedule of one flight per week.

Although the rocket planes could take off and land from any airport, Astrium believes it is likely that special spaceports - possibly 10 worldwide - will operate in a few, restricted locations.

Northern Europe probably would not host one of these, Mr Laine speculated, because of the high density of other air traffic and because cloud would too frequently obscure the view of Earth.

"In Europe, I'd say the most likely location is around the Mediterranean. Why? Because there are blue skies most of the time, and because from 100km you can see mountains, the sea and the coast."

Cheaper space

The Astrium CTO acknowledged that Virgin Group boss Sir Richard Branson would be first into the market with rocket planes based on the award-winning and record-breaking SpaceShipOne concept.

But Mr Laine was confident an Astrium-fed business would be second, with a commercial service that began exactly five years after the agreement of a one-billion-euro financing deal.

He even hoped Sir Richard would be an Astrium customer - just as his airline business is a customer of the EADS Airbus division.

The CTO would not say how soon the initial financing would be in place, or reveal details about the identities of parties that were in discussion.

 

Long-term, Mr Laine said, space tourism had a major role to play in reducing the overall cost of space access.

He sees rocket planes being used for homeland security purposes as "quick satellites"; and as forerunners of superfast intercontinental passenger transporters.

"Today we don't know how to go to space cheaply. Being able to climb on a regular basis to 100km will give us the motivation to develop the plane that goes, not just up and down to the same place, but from here to the other side of the Earth.

"When the Ariane 5 takes off, 15 minutes later it is over Europe; and 45 minutes later it is over the Pacific. The fastest way is to go outside the atmosphere and that will be the future."

BBC

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Next Space Tourist Takes Break from Spaceflight Training

 

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NEW YORK - The next space tourist bound for the International Space Station (ISS) is taking a breather from spaceflight training as he prepares to ride a Russian rocket toward the orbiting laboratory later this year.

American computer game developer Richard Garriott, 46, has returned to the U.S. after an intense six weeks of Russian classes and Soyuz spacecraft training for his planned October flight to the ISS. The one-month rest comes between a series of trips to Russia's cosmonaut training center in Star City, where he and backup Nik Halik have been wading through the intricacies of Soyuz spaceflight.

"In the Soyuz, all of the buttons and things are labeled in Russian, so you need to be able to read and understand a few technical words," Garriott told SPACE.com Friday, adding that he spent four hours each day learning the new language. "There's no question that learning Russian is a little bit of a challenge."

Based in Austin, Texas, Garriott is paying about $30 million to fly to the ISS with two professional astronauts in October under an agreement between Russia's Federal Space Agency and the Virginia-based tourism firm Space Adventures, which brokered the flight. He plans to conduct Earth observations and protein crystal growth experiments during his mission and launched an educational contest for British students to devise their own tests that he could perform.

In between language lessons, Garriott and Halik spent four hours each day studying Soyuz spacecraft training manuals and exploring Russia's Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center.

"One of the things that I didn't know was there while we were kicking around was that they have a wonderful planetarium," Garriott said, adding that he and Halik hope to visit the planetarium during their next training session. "It's a surprisingly open place."

The two entrepreneurs were careful to keep out of restricted zones and adhere to training protocol. Russian space officials recently replaced South Korea's first astronaut choice, artificial intelligence expert Ko San, for an April 8 launch due to regulation infractions. Ko's backup, female mechanical engineer Yi So-yeon, will take his place during the upcoming spaceflight.

Halik, 38, is an Australian entrepreneur who is paying $3 million to serve as Garriott's backup and experience genuine spaceflight training.

"Though Nik and I had not really known each other before training together in Star City, it turns out we've lived very parallel lives," said Garriott, adding that both he and his backup have taken adventure trips to Antarctica, rode aboard submersibles down to the wreck of the Titanic, experienced weightless on aircraft and flown Russian MiG jets. "Because we have that same adventurous spirit and similar background, training together has been actually really convenient and also given us a well-rounded opportunity to share this experience together."

Garriott developed the Ultima computer game series and co-founded the Origins Systems computer game company as well as the North American branch of the online game developer NCsoft. He hopes to spend his month off from training to catching up with his work. But, Garriott added, he did happen to be in Russia training for spaceflight in early February, when his most recent game "Tabula Rasa" hit stores in Moscow in its Russian packaging.

"Getting a chance to sit down with the players was actually great fun for me and hopefully they enjoyed it as well," Garriott said.

Garriott has expressed an interest in paying an extra $15 million to stage the first spacewalk by a private spaceflyer, though whether the activity could come together in time for his flight is up in the air. He has already been fitted for his Russian Sokol spacesuit, the partial pressure garment that he will wear during launch and landing, but not one worthy of a spacewalk.

"Of course I would love to do it if it could be done," said Garriott, adding that he hopes to put together some sort of simple, feasible science experiment in case it opportunity arises.

Garriott will be the sixth paying visitor to the ISS, but the first American second-generation spaceflyer to reach orbit. His father, Owen Garriott, is a retired NASA astronaut who flew aboard the U.S. Skylab space station and shuttle Columbia, and will serve as chief scientist for the coming spaceflight.

"One of the more interesting aspects of working with my father on this flight is what an appreciation it's given me for the challenges that my dad faced during his time with NASA," the younger Garriott said. "The sense of urgency to get all your ducks in a row and get things lined up appropriately has been high."

Richard Garriott is chronicling his spaceflight training and mission at his personal Web site: www.richardinspace.com.

Branson and his rocket

 

A few months ago, an Australian stand-up comedian who is beyond cure, told a small frigid gathering in Mumbai, "How can they call an airline Virgin. It's terrifying. You know what virgin means? Never done it before." He surveyed the room with a blank face and said, "I want my airline to be called Slut."

In the past, far more serious men have wondered if people will feel comfortable flying at nearly the speed of sound, 10 kilometres above the earth, in a pressurized metal capsule called Virgin. Especially if they knew that the airline is owned by one Richard Branson who has escaped death on several occasions while trying to set speed records in planes, balloons and boats. He rappels down buildings too, and has aborted at least one such attempt midway after a sudden backache that wise women will call ‘age'. Yet, thousands have paid him good money against a promise that in about three years he will send them to space. Over 60,000 people have registered with his Virgin Galactic, 200 of them have even paid the entire ticket price of $200,000. One man exchanged his Virgin Atlantic frequent-flier miles for his seat. They hope to leave a golden desert in California and shoot 100 kilometres into space. "They will return too," Branson says, "Virgin Galactic is not where you send your mother-in-law on a one-way flight."

He is in his suite at the Hilton in Mumbai. Somewhere behind him, through the large indestructible glass window, I can see the Arabian Sea ablaze in the afternoon sun. Some people are hovering around in the room, one of them is his blonde secretary whose stretch pants seem aghast at the tightness of it all. And she sounds like a man.

Branson looks pensive and unremarkable. Even mature. But the folklore around him is inescapable. A 57-year-old Englishman who is believed to be worth about $8 billion; head of an empire that is involved in aviation, rail, energy, telephony, condoms, pickles and leisure, who famously said that he did not know the difference between net and gross; once a lover of many; a rare celebrity who has featured in a list of Britain's most beloved and also the most hated; a spectacle whose autobiography is foolishly called Losing My Virginity, and more admirably, a man whom Donald Trump hates for reasons other than the fact that Branson has hair. "I don't believe he is a billionaire," Trump once said. Nobody believes that about Trump, either.

In the opulent suite, Branson tries to be polite and measured but he is evidently tired. That morning he had strung himself 20 floors above the ground and glided down to launch Virgin Mobile in India. He was in a few meetings after that, all vouchsafed with stringent time slots by his assistants. But he was five minutes late for this interview because Sameera Reddy, the buoyant nymph, had spotted him in the hotel and had wanted a chat.

Branson readily admits that his flamboyance endangers the image of Virgin as one of the most respected brands in modern times. He looks at the floor and chuckles as he remembers the day when his balloon crashed into the Pacific. "We took out full page ads in newspapers that said, ‘Next time, Richard, take the plane." (Strangely, in an interview to the New Yorker he had said that the wording of the ad was, ‘Come on, Richard, there are better ways of crossing the Atlantic'.)

"In this time and age, the things I do," he says, "is achro...anarcho...sorry... anachronistic. Actually, I am dyslexic." Taare Zameen Par missed this one. He is overtly embarrassed by the ordeal of pronouncing anachronistic. This shy face of Branson, so different from the image he has often tried to portray, this boyish sheepish face, I have seen before from as close.

Just over two years ago, his executives had agreed to play a cricket match with Mumbai's press club team. Branson arrived on the Oval Maidan flanked by a dozen white girls, all dressed in Virgin Atlantic's cabin crew uniform. They walked like doe. When Branson eventually got ready to bat there was a feeling that we will not measure up. The rumour was that the backyard of one of his homes was a cricket field complete with a pitch and all that. But he was bowled by the first ball. Since it was Richard, the umpire smiled kindly and called the delivery a no-ball. The second ball was slow. Branson was bowled again. He was bowled by the third ball too. I was at the Third Man position and as he walked back, I saw his face clearly. Beaming but demolished by embarrassment. However, for a man who did not know how to bat, he got a lot of publicity for playing cricket in Mumbai. He didn't field even.

"I am actually very shy," Branson says, "I was incapable of delivering a public speech until I was 25. Now I make half a million for just talking for charity. Not bad, eh? But I am still shy." Yet, he has received media space worth millions of dollars through relentless stunts. Once when British Airways, his bitter aviation rival, offloaded him from a flight, he held a press conference in the airport and made it a huge media event. British Airways was also involved in spreading propaganda against him. When he sued and won £610, he distributed it among his employees as "BA bonus". On another occasion, when his flight was delayed and he had to hire a chartered plane for $2,000, he divided the cost by the number of seats and went around the airport with a board that said something like, "Virgin Atlantic: Beef Island to Puerto Rico for $39".

Branson, through the creation of Virgin Galactic, comes across as a visionary today. So far, only 450 humans have ever been to space, almost all of them professional astronauts. Branson says he will send thousands out there. But some observers have voiced the concern that Branson's interest in space tourism is merely another attempt to seek publicity if not for himself, for the Virgin group. With an investment of about $120 million, an amount that is not very distant from how much global firms spend on brand building, Branson has bought the tag of space pioneer. A steal. But he says, "I am truly very excited by space tourism. I believe that the future of mankind is in space. Virgin Galactic will send 50 people to space every month. I expect this number to grow." He also believes that the future of aviation itself is inextricably linked to suborbital space travel. "In just 10 years time if everything goes well," he says, a plane from New York will head to space and use the gravity of Earth to fling itself above Sydney. "If we can bring that kind of technology to aviation, New York to Sydney is possible in 30 minutes."

His involvement in environmental concerns too is bitterly suspected by environmentalists. They claim his interest is not genuine, that he merely wants to throw money to buy a halo. Throughout the interview Branson consciously attempts to veer the conversation towards environment. He reminds me that he has pledged $3 billion over the next 10 years to aid the research and development of cleaner fuels. He has also announced a $25 million prize for anyone who can find a way to remove carbon from the atmosphere.

"Increasingly, private enterprise is doing what governments used to do," he says, "Also, while the life of an average head of state is just a few years, a business chief can go on for decades. So companies are able to exhibit more stability than governments. But nothing can replace the good that an honest government can do."

It will be interesting to watch how Branson's future unfolds. Will his space tourism succeed? Will his billions clean the air? After all the publicity, if he fails to deliver then he will begin to feel as though the world has got a whiff of the liquid component of his SpaceShipOne's hybrid engine—compressed nitrous oxide, which is laughing gas of course.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Lottery-winning beneficiary: I'm heading to space

An Auckland beneficiary who bought a lottery ticket on a whim is more than $5 million better off and hopes to travel into space.


The man, who wants to remain anonymous, was on a bike ride when he had a spur of the moment drink stop outside the Westview Superette in Titirangi, NZ Lotteries said.

After seeing an advertisement for the Big Wednesday jackpot, he bought a ticket, and yesterday discovered he was the big winner.

He won the first division prize package valued at $5,247,140, comprising $3 million in cash, an Aston Martin V8 Vantage, an Audi Q7, a $250,000 credit card, $250,000 worth of luxury travel, a $500,000 bach, a $750,000 luxury apartment and a boat.

He also won Big Wednesday's second division of $221,478 by covering heads and tails on his ticket.

The man collected his prize in Wellington today.

"People have always told me that you can't win these big prizes - but now I'm the lucky bugger this week", he said.

"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."

Virgin founder Richard Branson is finalising plans to take paying passengers into space next year.

Virgin Galactic will take people 112km above the earth for about $200,000 per person.

The winner said his first call was to a family member to share his good news.

The next call? To Winz to cancel his benefit.

NZPA
source

BOXLEITNER KEEN TO GO INTO SPACE

Movie & Entertainment News provided by World Entertainment News Network (www.wenn.com)

BABYLON 5 star BRUCE BOXLEITNER is desperate for Virgin bosses to drop the price of their upcoming shuttle trip - so he can afford to blast off.
The actor is on the Board Of Directors at the National Space Society but that's not helping him get a cheap space flight when the first Virgin Galactic shuttle takes off in 2010.
He moans, "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.
"We should get a Screen Actors Guild ride going! I have a feeling it'll be the Scream Actors Guild.
"I've always been fascinated with the wide open spaces; it's the unknown. The closest I've been to space is Babylon 5 but I never actually left the planet." So far, the only celebrities onboard the first flight are Bryan Ferry and former Dallas star Victoria Principal.
Virgin Galactic director Alex Tai has revealed 80,000 people from 120 countries have shown an interest in the first space trip.

Sunday, March 16, 2008

You may now float about the cabin



'SPACE: The final frontier, to seek out new life and civilisations." So said Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise as he surveyed the expanding cosmos.

But exploration, discovery and adventure are not the sole domain of science fiction: they have always been defining elements of the human psyche.

Once mankind satisfied the lesser, more fundamental requirements such as food, shelter and community, we looked beyond the horizon and wondered, "What if?"

Sure, it took thousands of years for our sluggish and humble species to progress from canoes to steamships, yet much less than one hundred to go from powered flight to space travel.

From a traveller's perspective, now is the most exciting time in our species' existence.

Such have been the astounding technological advances that, in one lifetime, man has flown to the moon and now transverses every continent at an altitude of 30,000ft in the company of hundreds of others, enjoying the latest movies and gourmet meals in pressurised comfort. To many, it's even mundane.

Space travel fell somewhat flat after the Apollo program. Many pundits, such as sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke, predicted we'd be sticking flags in Mars and holidaying on the moon by now.

Somewhere along the way we were sidetracked – probably because our expensive, clumsy rockets weren't as reliable as we'd hoped. This is World War II technology, after all.

Riding what amounts to a ballistic missile still hasn't deterred some, despite a pricetag equivalent to the GDP of a small African republic.

At time of writing, there have been five "spaceflight participants" aboard the Russian Soyuz craft, each traveller paying a reported $20 million for the week-long joy ride to the International Space Station (ISS).

Tickets are now being sold for a planned flight to orbit the moon. Price? $100 million each.

Affordable space flight? Enter the X PRIZE Foundation, a non-profit body offering multi-million dollar awards for technological breakthroughs. The 2004 Ansari X PRIZE was won by famed aerospace designer Burt Rutan and financier Paul Allen, who led the first private team to build and launch a spacecraft capable of carrying three people 100km above the Earth. Pounced upon by Virgin supremo Sir Richard Branson, commercial flights are now tantalisingly close.

Branson's Virgin Galactic spaceline expects to launch about 500 passengers annually.

His proposed fleet of five spaceships will have a crew of two and just six passengers, paying US$200,000 ($215,000) each, flying to an altitude of about 110km – the very edge of space – to experience almost 10 minutes of weightlessness.

Unlike NASA's Space Shuttle, which uses huge and dangerous solid fuel rocket boosters, Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo will launch from a jet-powered mother ship called WhiteKnightTwo, and use a single hybrid rocket motor to reach its peak sub-orbital altitude. And because the craft will only travel at around 4000km/h, it will not require heatshields for re-entry.

Branson appointed "space agents" last year, and Gil McLachlan of Harvey World Travel in Manly is one.

"There are at least 10 Australians fully paid up for the flight," said Mr McLachlan, "and there will be more in the next 12 months, for sure."

One such passenger eagerly awaiting his moment on the launch pad is Wilson da Silva, editor of Australian science magazine Cosmos, whose ticket was one of four bought by Dr Alan Finkel, the publication's chairman.

"Hard to believe that it's really going to happen," says da Silva with obvious delight. "It's been a dream of mine since I was a kid."

In Clarke's seminal 1968 work 2001: A Space Odyssey, Dr Heywood Floyd settles into the Orbiter Hilton for a family video call at a rather clunky terminal.

The choice of the Hilton name for that movie was no coincidence; it was a carefully engineered piece of product placement. William Barron Hilton I, the hotelier and grandfather of the famous Hilton sisters, bravely predicted in 1967: "When space scientists make it physically feasible to establish hotels in space and to transport people, the hotel industry will meet the challenge."

Beyond an orbiting hotel, his plans extended to the Lunar Hilton. "To start, we'll have only three floors, which will eliminate elevators and minimise power requirements," he said.

"The multi-storied underground hotel will come later.

"But – and this is very important – in almost every respect the Lunar Hilton will be physically like an Earth Hilton."

But Hilton appears to have lost the inside running to Branson and Robert T. Bigelow, a rival hotelier who is now an aerospace magnate. His Genesis modules are already in space, testing the concept of inflatable habitats for possible "hotel" adaptation.

For most of us reading this far, the reality of space flight will remain a fantasy, experienced vicariously in the Sensurround stadium of the cinema.

But the excitement of weightlessness can be achieved at Kennedy Space Centre, in Florida, on a Zero Gravity flight aboard G-Force One, the plane used to train NASA astronauts and film star Tom Hanks for Apollo 13. For $3500, you even get a DVD of your flight. I predict, however, that theme park, holodeck-style virtual reality will cater for the masses long before actual space flight does.

After all, it was to such a synthetic environment that Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry's homesick space adventurers went to "get away from it all".

As for the visionary Roddenberry ... his one-way trip into space was in an urn.

The Sunday Telegraph

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Sharaf Travel & Virgin Galactic Mid East tempt would-be astronauts with 'a taste of space'

Dubai headquartered Sharaf Travel and the Virgin Galactic Accredited Space Office in the Middle East has launched “A Taste of Space”. The new package has been designed to tempt would-be astronauts for the Virgin Galactic sub-orbital flights slated to commence end of 2009.

“Following the Global Accredited Space Agent Forum earlier this year where I underwent  the Virgin Galactic astronaut training  in the centrifuge for myself, I wanted to make this experience available to the people of the Middle East. ‘A Taste of Space’ is definitely for people looking for something unusual for their next short break and will give potential customers the opportunity to quell any fears with the nearest thing to real-life space travel without leaving earth,” said Sharon Garrett, Head of Space Marketing & PR, Virgin Galactic Accredited Space Office, Middle East.  

According to Garrett, the training for the sub-orbital space flight at the Nastar Centre will equip participants with the skills they require for Anti-G Straining Maneuvers and to fully understand the physiological effects of space flight before they even set foot into the centrifuge.  

“The training is fascinating, yet easy to understand.   The team at the Nastar Center make you feel incredibly comfortable and instill confidence.   I know that everyone who decides to take advantage of ‘A Taste of Space’ will sign up for the real thing with Virgin Galactic,” she said.

Explaining her own experience, Garrett says, “…the experience was one of the best of my life. I was a little anxious but once I underwent the training and stepped into the centrifuge, which is kitted out with full visuals and sound I had the most wonderful time. I felt as though I really was an astronaut !”

Saturday, March 8, 2008

XTRAORDINARY ADVENTURES ANNOUNCES 'WORLD'S FIRST SPACE CRUISE' WEEK...

SPACE CRUISE PLANNED IN APRIL 2009... XTRAORDINARY ADVENTURES is bringing a few famous astronauts aboard the yacht Sea Dream to select several passengers for a future sub-orbital spaceflight. Participants will experience weightlessness on a Zero-G flight from the Kennedy Space Center and G forces during space training.

A Florida company is bringing several U S Hall of Fame Astronauts on the luxury yacht Sea Dream to select future sub-orbital space participants during their 'Space Cruise' week event in April 2009. According to Mitchell J Schultz, it's Director, “ninety-six possible participants from around the globe are expected to register and become a part of space history.”

As the opportunity for commercial human spaceflight approaches, XTRAORDINARY ADVENTURES will enable a number of their participants to be selected and take part in this newest advent of excitement and exploration for man......by becoming a passenger on a future sub-orbital spaceflight.

Schultz further elaborates “with chances no greater than one out of sixteen and with a week full of stimulating space related events, participants will thrill to the experience of a lifetime as they schmooze with others of similar interests and mingle with U S Hall of Fame Astronauts that are all part of the festivities.”

In addition, XTRAORDINARY ADVENTURES will bring participants to Kennedy Space Center for a variety of special events including a chartered Zero-G flight, where each person will receive a personalized flight suit along with photos and a DVD of their experience. Participants will also receive a special two day space training program at NASTAR, near Philadelphia, where NASA has trained several Astronauts.

Ever since the dawn of early human spaceflight in the 1960's, mans desire to experience the awe of space, weightlessness and feel the power of  rockets and G  forces has excited many to wonder if and when will this opportunity be within reach. Now, it appears that the time is almost at hand with the successful flight of SpaceShipOne in October 2004 and entering the world into a  commercial sub-orbital space race.

With costs ranging from $98,000 to $250,000 for a seat, XTRAORDINARY ADVENTURES has put together a program for $35,000 that Schultz claims “will allow all our participants an opportunity to not only taste the flavors of a space trip, with their space training and weightless flight experience, but will also send up to six lucky participants on a future sub-orbital spaceflight with an authorized FAA licensed carrier or provide for a payment of $150,000 to each of the six if there are no scheduled flights or departures by April 30, 2012.” 

Mitchell J Schultz is an experienced adventurer, world traveler and avid space enthusiast. Traveling for over 40 years, he has visited over 50 countries and has founded XTRAORDINARY ADVENTURES, LLC to market the making of 'Dreams to Reality' for the true space adventurer. Discriminating travelers with the inclination and the budget to take the space cruise will participate in the world's most exhilarating week of space related events and activities culminating with sending participants on a future sub-orbital spaceflight that will forever become one of their most memorable experiences.

For more information visit www.XtraOrdinaryAdventures.com

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

The Stars: Our Destination

Vacations in space and time

Forty years ago it was “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Now it is a small step for anyone who dares.
For the last four decades, space flight has been neglected as a primary conduit to human evolution. 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

Image courtesy of virgin galactic, design by sky 26
travel as a luxury for those who can afford it

image

The dream of everyday space flight has been around a long time. But, while science fiction has been escalating in the last decade with advanced computer-generated graphics, society has largely forgotten actual space exploration. In the mid-20th century, the United States and the former Soviet Union were feverishly involved in pushing space exploration. It seemed that, like in Star Trek, space exploration was best executed by the government.
In the 1980s, NASA began to launch shuttles that took off from and landed on Earth more than once. These shuttles cut down on the cost of development. The down side of the shuttle, however, was they offered no progression. The need to develop new models was minimal.
Since then, however, the idea of international cooperation has inspired multiple governments to join together and build the International Space Station. Bent on scientific discovery rather than territorial expansion, the station has ended much of the exploration being done by governments. The weight of exploration is now left to the private sector. With little room being left on Earth to expand empires, corporations like Virgin have seized the opportunity to expand their market into space. It offers free expansion as no one currently owns space.
Further initiative came from the Ansari X prize. It inspired innovators and dreamers to build the first commercial sub-orbital space craft. Many competitors strove to reach the goal and win the prize: $10 million. It was a company named Scaled Composites, founded by Burt Rutan, that eventually designed the winner. Named SpaceShipOne, it flew at an altitude of more than 100 kilometres. The design of SpaceShipOne is simple and efficient, which makes it significantly less expensive than NASA’s fuel-guzzling shuttles.
SpaceShipOne uses a form of biofuel. The fuel is practical enough to allow the ship to reach sub-orbit, but requires less than half of what a normal shuttle does. To achieve optimal efficiency, Scaled Composites attached the SpaceShipOne to WhiteKnightOne, an aircraft. Instead of launching from the ground, ShipShipOne launches after becoming airborne. This technique allows for even more efficiency.
The ship’s efficiency was what drew Virgin’s Sir Richard Branson. The company was inspired to begin its own attempts at building a commercially viable passenger space craft. Based on the SpaceShipOne’s design, SpaceShipTwo has become Virgin Galactic’s platform for allowing private citizens to visit space.
“It was Stephen Hawking who first got me thinking about this issue when he explained clearly and concisely to the BBC that mankind had no option but to get to space as quickly as possible and start doing things up there that we have been doing on planet Earth, but in a much more efficient manner,” Branson said at SpaceShipTwo’s unveiling.
Branson seemed sincere when he said that space flight is essential to human development. Without prospects of commercial success, however, Virgin Galactic would be unable to justify their investment to stockholders.
That profit requirement means a ticket to space does not come cheap. Current pricing places the cost of a ticket at $200,000 US a seat. The ticket will buy tourists a several minute journey at sub-orbital altitudes.
Though the initial price of a ticket will prove far out of reach for most consumers, it is expected to incrementally decrease as the program continues to pick up speed. After a few years and a few hundred people, the price of a ticket will most likely go down to $20,000 US a piece.
There are others, however, who are finding a way around paying the hefty fee. A British businessman was able to exchange two million Air Miles points for a ticket aboard one of the first flights. However, for the majority of people, $20,000 is far too expensive, even if it is to witness something as spectacular as seeing planet Earth from space. 
Yet Branson sees this as just the beginning of better things to come for the industry.
“With the end of the oil era approaching and climate change progressing faster than most models have been predicting, the utilization of space is essential not only for communications but also for the logistics of survival through things such as weather satellites, agricultural monitoring, GPS and climate science.”
Not only would space be a reasonable way to guarantee survival of the species, it would also guarantee optimal profit should Virgin Galactic hold a monopoly on commercial space flight. However, without a profit, there would be no motivation for space tourism in the first place.
Several companies, such as Rocketplane Limited, Space Adventures and EADS Astrium, have announced their intention to be commercial spaceflight agencies. There is no doubt that in the future, spaceflight will become a standard of travel.
For Virgin Galactic, however, tourism is just the beginning. The company will most likely expand from tourism to a more lucrative industry like transportation from one side of the Earth to the other. Instead of taking a day to travel to Japan, a spaceship capable of holding up to 100 passengers could cut that time significantly.
The advantages of commercial space flight are numerous. Its ability to push innovation is already taking the place of NASA. Government will always play a role to some degree, but ventures such as asteroid mining, solar energy collectors and colonization will be ideal for corporations to invest their time and money into because of the potential for maximum profit.
Although governments could plan and build environments on other planets to house humans, it would be capitalism that forces the economy and infrastructure. What drives people to exotic places is not just a sense of adventure but, like with any new frontier, the possibility of discovering a better life with better job opportunities. Those jobs will be provided by companies like Virgin.
Relatively speaking, there are still more than enough complications prolonging spaceflight developments. While interplanetary exploration is accepted as a future prospect for mankind, interstellar spaceflight is a bit more complicated with the vast gaps between stars. It would currently take centuries to get to the nearest star systems using the most powerful propulsion methods currently available. Though most of us will not be able to see the interstellar steps, we will be alive to see the first true steps of space exploration.

 

Written by Brent Rose, Contributor

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

An interview with Richard Garriott

An interview with Richard Garriott
by Sam Dinkin

image

Space tourist Richard Garriott during a zero-g airplane flight last year. Garriott is scheduled to fly to the ISS this fall. (credit: richardinspace.com)

[Editor’s note: the following is an edited version of an email interview between Sam Dinkin and Richard Garriott, a developer of computer games like Tabula Rasa who is currently in Russia training to be the next commercial visitor to the International Space Station this fall.]
Mind and skills

Sam Dinkin, The Space Review (TSR): Are you finding some parallels in your final training with the player experience in Tabula Rasa (TR)?

Richard Garriott: Interesting you should ask! There are definitely some overlaps! Learning to use new high tech devices in an alien environment, in an alien language…

TSR: Is it easier to learn Logos [an alien language in TR] or Russian?

Garriott: Logos was designed to be easy to read, no question it is far easier!

TSR: Are you wishing there was a way to skip the astronaut training the way you can skip boot camp if you want in TR?

Garriott: Not at all! Boot camp here is part of the experience I am thrilled to be part of!

TSR: Have any funny training anecdotes?

Garriott: How I long for the massive variety of food available in the USA, or even Moscow. Here in Star City, we eat at the military Flight Cantina. While the food is tasty enough, it appears we are having pretty much the same thing at every meal of every day!


Crafting supplies

TSR: Did you bring some nucleotides, nano mechs, and a TR “crafting station” to do your scientific research on the International Space Station (ISS)?

Garriott: Close! I will be bringing a variety of proteins up to the ISS to crystallize in microgravity, to then return to the X-ray diffraction “station” back in Huntsville.

TSR: Can you give a technical description of the experiments you’re doing?

Garriott: I have many, but the most interesting involves protein crystal growth. Getting an accurate atomic structure for protein molecules is very valuable for science and medicine. One of the best ways to image a protein molecule is to first crystallize it and then use a process called x-ray diffraction to see what its shape is. However, crystals grown on the ground are generally impure due to tiny convection currents in the fluid they are crystallizing in. In space there are no such currents. We believe we have a novel and, more importantly, better way to do this than has been tried before. If this works out, we can demonstrate a process of great potential commercial value!

TSR: Anything else cool that you’re bringing?

Garriott: In addition to many more commercial and educational activities, I will be doing the first art show in space featuring the art of my mother, who inspired half the brain that was required for me to be in the high-tech art business.


Body

TSR: How does the weather there compare to Austin’s 25°C and sunny today?

Garriott: Cold for me, warm by local standards. It snows almost exactly every other day!

TSR: How’s the food compared to Uchi [a Japanese restaurant in Austin]?

Garriott: Uchi, oh how I miss you! Tyson Cole, please send me a care package! Hudson’s, Salt Lick, Jeffries… yum. While the food in Moscow is great, out here I am on a military base, and while the food is good quality, it lacks variation, and Austin has some of the best cuisine in the world, as you know.

TSR: Are you doing a special Austin meal for the crew while you are there?

Garriott: Actually I do plan to throw an “event” later in the year, but I have to figure out how to pull it off. An interactive event, as I am known for in Austin, would be fun to do here!

TSR: Were you able to paint your space suit a custom color like you can in TR?

Garriott: Actually, yes! There is a gentleman I have heard that has made everyone’s space suit since Gagarin. I hear that when you meet with him, it’s sort of like a custom fashion designer session, and you get to select colors, style, and anything else you want!

TSR: What do you think the main environmental difference will be on the ISS?

Garriott: Beyond the obvious like weightlessness and being totally enclosed, due to the deadly vacuum outside the hull, orientation will be the main variation I expect. The ISS is now the scale of a 747, and has modules extending in all directions. Floors, ceilings and walls all have windows, equipment racks and storage lockers and bags. Since there is no up or down in pretty much every sense of the words, I think that will be an interesting adjustment.


Backpack

TSR: How much has the fall in the dollar vs. the ruble raised the price from what Dennis Tito paid? Did you bring a backpack full of $100 bills?

Garriott: Actually the unfavorable changes in exchange rates have significantly affected the cost of doing this trip!

TSR: It will be about $75 per second of zero G for you; wouldn’t it be cheaper to float in neutral buoyancy in Austin?

Garriott: Yes, and as much fun as floating in Lake Travis would be (and not a bad neutral buoyancy event either) something important would be different.

TSR: What does it cost to buy a candy bar in space, $1,200 per ounce? Is everything in space like a rare TR “purple item”?

Garriott: Oh, yes!


Spirit

TSR: How does it feel to be following your father into space to become the first second-generation astronaut?

Garriott: Great! It has also become a great opportunity to work closely with my father, which is a great bonding time for us as adults!

TSR: Once you have achieved your life’s ambition, what heights will you scale next? How about a flight around the Moon?

Garriott: There is still a lot of “exploring” to do here on Earth, and while I would love to go to the Moon, I will likely be happy with my time in orbit for the time being!

TSR: In the opening sequence of TR, people were oblivious, then the world changed radically over night. Does an asteroid strike or climate change worry you?

 

Garriott: While some day an asteroid will in fact hit the earth, in any given year the probability is so slight that it is not something to get too excited about other than to start developing the technology for the eventual day that it does arrive. Climate change, however, is very real, and will absolutely affect millions upon millions of people well within our life times. It is not that the world will end, but at the very least, many already impoverished areas will be further decimated, and the economic shifts could affect us dramatically!

TSR: Can you sum up the key theme of what you want the world to learn from your flight?

Garriott: I hope to learn how to better make space a viable reality for everyone. To do that, I think it needs to be shown that the investment in space is worth it. That is why I hope that at least some of my experiments pay off. If even one does, it will mean that there are more that can be done, and thus justify further flights by private individuals and companies.

Screening and training for commercial human spaceflight

by Jeff Foust

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Virgin Galactic is using this centrifuge at the NASTAR Center outside Philadelphia to make sure its customers can handle the accelerations of a SpaceShipTwo flight. (credit: J. Foust)

Since the beginning of the space age, governments have had their pick of highly-qualified candidates to become astronauts or cosmonauts. With the supply of candidates far exceeding the demand, space agencies have had the luxury of being able to choose the very best, based on both their skills and expertise as well as their physical condition. This was especially true in the early history of spaceflight, when the effects of spaceflight on the human body were relatively unknown, but even today there are strict medical requirements that ensure that astronauts are in the uppermost percentiles of health and fitness among the general population.

As a commercial human spaceflight industry emerges, though, it faces a very different situation. These companies do not typically have the luxury of choosing only a handful of the best, brightest, and fittest people. Indeed, for the business plans of space tourism operators to close, they need to be able to fly as many people with the means to afford such a trip as possible. That means accepting people with a more typical range of health and fitness levels, and with a variety of ailments, while filtering out only those whose conditions are so poor as to be at risk if they flew a suborbital spaceflight. It also means determining a training regimen for both passengers and crewmembers that ensures that they are prepared for the flight without bogging them down with months or years of preparation.


Screening

An obstacle for new spaceflight operators is the lack of a large body of medical data that they can refer to regarding how people react to acceleration, weightlessness, and other aspects of spaceflight. Fewer than 500 people have flown in space since Yuri Gagarin’s flight in 1961, and those people were typically in peak health and fitness. “Do we know all the medical risks of flying in space? The answer is we don’t, particularly for people who have medical problems,” said Dr. Melchor Antuñano, director of the Civil Aerospace Medical Institute, at the FAA’s 11th Annual Commercial Space Transportation Conference earlier this month in Crystal City, Virginia. “We have not selected somebody who has had two or three stents, a bypass surgery, who has hepatitis, or who has diabetes.”

 

 

There is, though, some data finally starting to emerge about how a broader slice of public can tolerate the stresses of launch. Julia Tizard, operations lead for Virgin Galactic, discussed at the conference early results from a passenger training exercise. Virgin has taken a number of its early customers, or Founders, to the NASTAR Center outside Philadelphia for centrifuge training. There, the Founders were put through a centrifuge test that simulated the accelerations they would feel during launch and reentry of a SpaceShipTwo flight.

“If you were working from scratch and guessing what proportion of the market that you would think be able to manage a spaceflight—in the specific context of a Virgin Galactic spaceflight, whose G forces range up to 6 Gs on reentry—you might guess 50 percent,” she said. “At VG, we’re hoping that 80 percent of the people we had sold tickets to would be able to go through the program.”

The results exceeded even Virgin’s hopes. Of the 70 people tested at NASTAR, 93 percent made it through the test successfully. Of the five who did not, she said, two had their training delayed and one their training curtailed, and only two were unable to continue at all. That group of people, she said, ranges in age from 22 to 88, and with varying medical issues, including heart bypass surgery in the last five years.

In the quest for more information about the health issues associated with commercial spaceflight, Antuñano spoke of the need for more people like Greg Olsen, who released details of the medical issues—a black spot that appeared on a lung x-ray—that initially disqualified him from a Soyuz flight to the ISS. Such openness allows the industry to gain experience and evaluate screening criteria, he said, as well as evaluate the use of analog testing environments on the Earth.


Training and regulation

The extensive training that NASA astronauts receive both after their selection to the astronaut corps and when picked for a specific mission, which can last for a year or more, is clearly not appropriate for suborbital spaceflights that will last a matter of hours or even minutes. However, exactly what kind of training is appropriate for such flights is something the industry has not standardized—and, for the time being, does not want to.

 

There are a number of training options available for commercial spaceflight companies. Glenn King, chief operating officer of the NASTAR Center, noted that his facility includes not just the centrifuge used by Virgin Galactic in its recent tests, but also a spatial disorientation trainer and a hypobaric chamber, both useful for preparing passengers and crews for a variety of environments associated with spaceflight.

Some of those environments, such as high-G training, can be provided by aircraft that don’t require the infrastructure and expense of a centrifuge. King argued that, particularly in the event of a medical emergency during a test, a centrifuge—which can be stopped quickly to allow for the rapid egress of an injured person and their transport to a hospital, if needed—was better than an aircraft, which would take time to land and transport a patient to medical care.

Additional training will be required if, as some companies are planning, customers will wear pressure suits during their flight. Jeff Feige, CEO of Orbital Outfitters, a commercial spacesuit developer, said that the training they envision for the use of their suits will range from basic classroom familiarization to simulated pressurization of suit and emergency egress from the vehicle while wearing the suit. Something as simple as testing putting on the suit can be useful for identifying people who have claustrophobia, he said. “A lot of people don’t realize they’re claustrophobic until that helmet is locked and they’re told they can’t take if off. And then all of a sudden they realize they are feeling a little uncomfortable and this isn’t exactly what they had expected.”

Some vehicle developers and operators, though, are concerned about moving too quickly to codify training requirements for crews and customers. “I am living in fear of the move to develop standards for crew and passenger training in this industry,” said Jeff Greason, CEO of XCOR Aerospace. “I think it’s a mistake at this stage in the development of the industry.”

Greason sees three reasons why people might want to move press for standards this early. “The good reason is they want to help,” he said. “But it’s not like we haven’t thought of most of this stuff already.” The bad reasons, he said, were that some people stand to benefit by making training standards, particularly those people who provide similar training services for the government, and that “standards for the sake of standards” are helpful for the industry by making it look more mature. “We don’t know the answers yet,” he said. “Codifying our mistakes early is one of the biggest errors we could make.”

 

Tizard echoed that concern. “The goal obviously here is for a successful long-term business in commercial human spaceflight industry, and that gives us two really key requirements: safety and a booming market, and a booming market requires safety,” she said. “In the early years, it’s important that the operator proposes what those standards and those safety margins are, because they’re the ones with the information about their vehicle’s capabilities and what’s needed to ensure a successful business plan.”

“The learning that we’re doing, and the operational procedures and training procedures that we may apply to our operation may be completely irrelevant to some other vehicle that perhaps doesn’t have the same g-loads or has a completely different cockpit setup,” she added.

At the end of the panel session about training, someone asked what sort of training would be needed for someone who wanted to fly again. “At the coffee table, there’s been discussion about what you do to do when somebody want to fly a second or third time,” said Greason. “If this market is so robust that people get off the plane and they can’t wait to go again, we win.”

Audley Travel boss books space flight with Virgin Galactic

Audley Travel boss Craig Burkinshaw (pictured below) will experience the trip of a lifetime when he boards a Virgin Galactic spaceship.

The Oxfordshire-based businessman, who heads up the specialist tour operator, has spent £100,000 to be one of the first space tourists.

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He said: “It’s a lot of money but I want to be among the first. I’ve done skydiving many times and travelled all round the globe, but this is going to be fantastic. I want to see the Earth the way astronauts see it.”

Launch and landing points will be in New Mexico and the journey will last an estimated 150 minutes. On each trip there will be just six passengers and the spaceship will reach a height of 100km, just past the Earth’s atmosphere.

source

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Space flight experience at a bargain price

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A promotional shot of Virgin Galactic's Spaceship Two.

If a $260,000 flight into space busts your budget then maybe the $23,000 sub-orbital space flight training is more up your alley.

Open to the public for the first time, the simulation has been designed to mimic an intergalactic experience.

Three Australian travel agents have recently returned from the Virgin ASA Global Forum in the US where the Virgin brainchild was launched.

But the ride comes at a cost.

Virgin is planning on putting together half day (about $2030), full day (about $3390) and two-day (about $5645) packages for space junkies.

Edwin Spencer, director of Spencer Travel in Sydney, said that the simulation conveys what a trip in space is like, however the G forces on the ride are a little lower. He thinks that it is worth the cost.

"You get the exact same experience as if you were going to do one of the flights (into space)," Spencer said from the conference in Philadelphia.

"They (Virgin) are trying to promote this facility to give you the experience of what it would be like on a space flight. It's so deadly accurate."

Having said this, Spencer admits that it's not for everyone.

"I think by the time you package it all and you get them over here it's probably going to cost about $20,000, with airfares and accommodation.

"... It's not going to appeal everyone but it's brand spanking new ... it's something really really unique.

"The big boys toys kind of people. The guys that love the adventure."

The travel packages will include the sub-orbital space flight training in Pennsylvania and the longer sessions will also include training on a parabolic flight and fighter pilot training in Las Vegas.

Spencer Travel, accredited as a Virgin Galactic Space Agent, sold Australia's first fully-paid ticket to space last year.

The journey into space takes two and a half hours to fly up 15,240 metres. The mothership then drops the rocket and it is sent soaring to 116,000 metres.

To put it into context, a standard aeroplane flies at about 9000 metres.

Passengers then experience five minutes of weightlessness before being returned to earth.

The $260,000 journey takes just a day but involves two days training.

The first 100 visitors to go into space, deemed Founders by Virgin, are expected to make the trip in 2010. Most positions on the Founders team were invitation only, but one fully-paid female from Australia made the rollcall.

"She is determined to be in the first 100," Spencer said.

The space-loving customer wants to keep a low profile, but Spencer said that she is an adventurer.

He said that space travel hadn't aroused the same excitement here as it had in the US.

"It's not that big in Australia but in the US it's huge," he said.

"This is just the beginning. It's the ultimate experience in life.

"It's that whole concept of being able to see Earth out of the left hand porthole and space from the right hand porthole."

IF YOU GO:

Visit: http://www.spencertravel.com.au