Jeff Bezos’ space venture, Blue Origin, is facing turbulent times. The company aims to revolutionize space travel and compete with industry giants like SpaceX. But recent setbacks have cast doubt on their progress. Blue Origin’s flagship project is the New Glenn rocket. It’s a 321-foot behemoth designed for orbital launches. The rocket was supposed to … Read More “Blue Origin’s Blast-Off Blues: Bezos’ Space Dreams Hit Turbulence”” »
In part two of our coverage of the ISS (you can check out previous coverage here), we will take a closer look at how the station was actually built. With over a dozen countries involved, and so many different components (159 had been installed as of June 2011) that would make up this marvel of … Read More “Building the International Space Station (ISS)” »
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” »
Dennis Tito is, while not the first non-astronaut in space, definitely the first space tourist. Self-funded with the capital he built up through his company Wilshire Associates (investment management since 1972), you wouldn’t exactly class him as the average neighbour living around the corner. With a Bachelor of Science in Astronautics and Aeronautics from NYU … Read More “Dennis Tito (1940)” »
By far the most known man-made object in space must be the International Space Station, or ISS. As large as a football field, with some patience and knowing where to look (check here for its current position) you could even spot it with the naked eye. The best chance to see it would be the … Read More “The International Space Station (ISS)” »
Blue Origin is a privately funded aerospace company set up by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, the man who made his billions – that’s billions, not millions – proving to the world that e-commerce was a viable business model. The secretive company has since 2000 been working on a suborbital crew capsule, conducting tests under NASA’s … Read More “Blue Origin” »
Let’s take a closer look at SpaceX. If the fact that it was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk (aka “the real Tony Stark“) doesn’t guarantee it success (he did after all start PayPal and Tesla Motors amongst others!), the numbers do most of the talking: with nearly 50 launches on its manifest, representing more … Read More “SpaceX” »
To start our series of company profiles, there’s none better than Virgin Galactic. Led by the charismatic Sir Richard Branson who built out his Virgin empire through a variety of different industries and ideas, they are planning to provide sub-orbital spaceflights to the paying public, along with suborbital space science missions and orbital launches of … Read More “Virgin Galactic” »
