About a month ago, we covered Mars One, the organisation founded by Dutch entrepreneur Bas Lansdorp that is planning to have people settle on Mars. Interestingly, their main source of income for this enterprise will be a reality-TV program about those colonists… fast forward to this week, and here we have it: Virgin Galactic is … Read More “Virgin Galactic Teams Up With TV Show” »
The Netherlands usually gets mentioned in conversations about tulips, cheese, and windmills… but it seems another topic might soon join the mix. Mars One, a non-profit organization (we touched upon them briefly in our previous Mars coverage) founded by Dutch entrepreneur Bas Lansdorp, is closing its registration round for people who are interested in a … Read More “Mars One” »
With the space race heating up, there are still new companies throwing their hat into the ring. Enter Paul Allen, who made his fortunes by founding Microsoft with Bill Gates in 1975, a company he remained its chief technologist of until his departure in 1983. These days he is a prolific investor and philanthropist, whose … Read More “Stratolaunch Systems” »
As is becoming more obvious every day to those reading up on the latest in space travel, humanity will soon enter a new era. The day a friend or family member will be sitting at the dinner table, talking about how an acquaintance flew into space with one of these entrepreneurial companies will not be … Read More “How to get hired by a spaceline” »
Sir Richard Branson‘s Virgin Galactic is pushing things into high gear, with the recent appointment of two heavy hitters. At the start of July it announced the appointment of Doug Shane as Executive Vice President and General Manager of The Spaceship Company (TSC) which as you might remember from reading here, began as a joint … Read More “Virgin Galactic is expanding at the top” »
There are several companies out there – including Virgin Galactic and XCOR Aerospace to name but a few – who are looking to monetize space tourism. But there is another company out there which recently got a £60 million investment from the UK government to build a full scale prototype for its revolutionary engine design. … Read More “Reaction Engines” »
A few weeks ago we wrote about Dennis Tito, the first paying passenger to go into space. Earlier this year, Tito announced the formation of the Inspiration Mars Foundation, a nonprofit organisation with a very specific short-term objective: sending a two-person American crew on a historic journey within 100 miles around the Red Planet and … Read More “Inspiration Mars Foundation” »
Ever wondered how rockets create all that trust to blast off into space? Queue Tom Mueller, SpaceX’s Vice President of Propulsion Development, who will tell you all about it with his narrated schematic of SpaceX‘s Merlin rocket engine here. Don’t forget to toggle the full screen option. Of course, this engine isn’t your run of … Read More “How Does A Rocket Engine Work?” »
Looking at the near-future, we can safely start saying that the second half of this decade will see the rise of a new industry: space tourism. One of the companies that will do battle in this arena is XCOR Aerospace, a small American private rocket engine and spaceflight development company originally based at the Mojave … Read More “XCOR Aerospace” »
In May of last 2012, Dragon became the first commercial spacecraft to successfully rendezvous and connect with the International Space Station (ISS) and with that it put SpaceX firmly on the map. For those curious on how that would have looked like, check out the following link and make sure to drag your cursor around. … Read More “Dragon” »