NASTAR PRESS RELEASE
Environmental Tectonics Corporation’s (OTC Bulletin Board: ETCC) (“ETC” or the “Company”) The National AeroSpace Training and Research (NASTAR®) Center announced today that it is the first entity to receive a Safety Approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Office of Commercial Space Transportation.
International Space Station
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev marked the 49th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s flight into space with a call to astronauts aboard the International Space Station. He praised the occupants of the orbiting laboratory, pointed to the project as an example of successful international cooperation, and proposed that world leaders hold a summit to discuss what else they might do in space together.
ZERO-G: Now with 40 percent more room at 37 percent higher prices. (PRNewsFoto/Zero Gravity Corporation, Al Powers)
ZERO-G will introduce a new Platinum service next week for its microgravity flights, which adds two extra parabolic loops and 40 percent more space for passengers to float around it. The new service also comes with a hefty price tag: $6,800 per person plus tax, a 37.37 percent increase from the $4,950 base rate charged for the standard package.
Discovery takes its next-to-last flight, Obama prepares to face the music on the Space Coast, SpaceX outlooks a May launch for Falcon 9, the price goes up for a seat on a Soyuz, space fans the world over gear up for Yuri’s Night, auroras on Saturn, WISE images the “hidden galaxy”, Spitzer spies Orion, Phoenix is almost certainly dead, and Buzz gets the boot.
Exterior view of Bigelow Aerospace's Genesis II
The Daily Press reports that Bigelow Aerospace is looking to launch flights for its commercial space station out of Wallops Island in Virginia:
Michael Gold, an attorney who represents Bigelow Aerospace, said the Nevada-based company will work at Wallops provided the nation commits to the commercial spaceflight agenda outlined by President Barack Obama.
“We will be here,” Gold told a group of about 50 people on April 1 following a tour of Wallops, where NASA has launched rockets from since 1945….
Bigelow plans to begin launches of its private Sundancer space station beginning in 2014, with commercial operations commencing the following year. It is now working on securing boosters and launch facilities. The company – which launched two prototypes aboard Russian rockets – wants to operate within the United States because of strict export law restrictions that make foreign launches difficult.
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides is a space advocate, consultant and former astrobiologist who has worked in the Canadian Arctic doing research with NASA, at the bottom of the ocean with director James Cameron and has accumulated over 4 hours of weightless time as a Flight Director for Zero Gravity Corp. She has done some work with the X PRIZE foundation as well as written for Wired magazine. Loretta is also the […]
This week in The Space Review: Jeff Foust reports on recent developments in NewSpace and how mature the industry sees itself. Angela Peura describes how Obama’s plans for NASA, like Gemini nearly 50 years ago, is building up the technologies and techniques needed for future human space exploration Jonathan Coopersmith argues that the President’s plan for NASA needs to go further and address the fundamental problem of space access. Dwayne […]
The Sydney Morning Herald has a report about the Starwalker reality show and its suddenly press shy “creator” Jonathan Nolan:
Jonathan Nolan had plans for the world’s most ambitious reality show – a global cross-continent space challenge pitting prospective astronauts against each other for the chance to win two tickets into space.
He told media, partners and contestants that he had already secured two seats on Russian Soyuz rockets, had a production partner in Britain and had already obtained from foreign investors the tens of millions of dollars required to get the project, dubbed “Starwalker”, off the ground.
The Space Show’s guests include Veronica Ann Zabala-Aliberto, Gary Moir, Don Harvey, Phillip Harris and Mark Whittington.
I’m back in Sunnyvale after nearly four days in Phoenix. It took two hours to fly home with no time change, but it feels like I’ve gone back by about a month. I left Phoenix on a sunny spring day and arrived in San Jose in mid-winter. The Silicon Valley is at its chilly and soggy worst. Sunnyvale isn’t living up to its name. Nor is California living up to its reputation. Bad weather was never in any of the brochures I read about this place before moving here. I would sue the state for false advertising – but that would be pointless given that California is in worse financial shape than I am. The most I would get would be a 50 cents off coupon to Pinkberry. If that….
But, I digress.
Rocketplane Global Vice President Chuck Lauer said today that the company expects to begin flying space tourists on suborbital rides out of Cecil Field in Jacksonville by 2013. Rocketplane has signed a letter of intent with the Jacksonville Aviation Authority to become the first commercial space operator to use the former Naval air base turned spaceport, Lauer told attendees at Space Access ’10 in Phoenix.
Lauer said that that Rocketplane would fund development of its six-person space plane as part of a $300 million project that would also create a Spaceport Visitor’s Center at the Jacksonville site. The center would include full motion 3D/HD suborbital flight simulators that would allow visitors to experience a 4-minute version of the 45-minute spaceflight that well-heeled passengers will fly aboard Rocketplane’s suborbital vehicle.
Space Access 10 Conference
Copenhagen Suborbitals
Frank Smith
Overview
A Danish non-profit that is creating a small capsule that is designed to carry one person on short suborbital hops
Group has collected nearly 24,000 euros since January – target is 50,000 euros
