Charles Lurio of The Lurio Report (www.thelurioreport.com) has some additional information about the XCOR deal that was announced today: XCOR personnel would conduct any and all operations, maintenance and physical security for the vehicle; “Mark I†Lynx is only a _prototype, testbed_ vehicle, and that only one will be built; Construction of the Mark I, with initial flights in early 2011; Depending on those flights, the Mark II, “tail number […]
Ares I-X lifts off from the Cape - possibly the one and only launch of the program.
Exclusive:Obama Backs New Launcher and Bigger NASA Budget
ScienceInsider
President Barack Obama will ask Congress next year to fund a new heavy-lift launcher to take humans to the Moon, asteroids, and the moons of Mars, ScienceInsider has learned. The president chose the new direction for the U.S. human space flight program Wednesday at a White House meeting with NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, according to officials familiar with the discussion. NASA would receive an additional $1 billion in 2011 both to get the new launcher on track and to bolster the agency’s fleet of robotic Earth-monitoring spacecraft.
XCOR's Lynx suborbital vehicle
XCOR PRESS RELEASE
December 17, 2009
The Yecheon Astro Space Center announced today that it has selected XCOR Aerospace as its preferred supplier of suborbital space launch services. Operating under a wet lease model, XCOR intends to supply services to the Center using the Lynx Mark II suborbital vehicle, pending United States government approvals to station the vehicle in the Republic of Korea.
Reaction Engines – which is building the Skylon space plane – has acquired two production firms.
FROST & SULLIVAN PRESS RELEASE
Despite the global financial crisis, revenue-generating opportunities across the entire space value chain are expected to increase over the medium to long terms. However, changing dynamics will impel individual industry participants within specific sub-sectors toward a more complex market.
Photo Credit: Sam Coniglio
PRESS RELEASE
Virgin Galactic announced 18 new Virtuoso® travel advisors as ‘Accredited Space Agents’ (ASAs), including Ezana Araya of Andavo Travel, Inc with offices in Denver, Colo., San Francisco, Calif., and Salt Lake City, Utah.
Supervisors hear details of harrowing tent collapse
Bakersfield.com
As the dignitary-filled buses rolled away from the event, the wind did what Witt had worried it would. At 7:36 p.m. the wind peeled the tent like an orange and sent the steel structure crashing onto the inflatable buildings next to it.
Space travel not on the cards
Travel Daily
Space travel looks set to remain the final undiscovered frontier as price concerns are turning holidaymakers off from becoming space tourists, reveals a survey by leading business-to-business travel and tourism event World Travel Market.
Top US lawmaker skeptical of new space funding
AFP
Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she was personally skeptical of manned space missions and warned that NASA’s future funding could depend on whether it was likely to create jobs.
Pelosi vowed “harsh scrutiny” of all spending requests and said she would be asking “what is the mission? How will the money effectively be spent, in what period of time, to create jobs, compared to what?”
NASA PRESS RELEASE
It looked like a light show in Elkton, Md., on Tuesday, Dec. 15, as NASA ground tested a full-scale attitude control motor, or ACM. The motor operated with precision as its elaborate eight-valve control system opened and closed each valve at exactly the right moment with alternating bursts of light.
AIA PRESS RELEASE
The Administration and Congress should look to the aerospace industry as it develops strategies to spur the economic recovery and create jobs, AIA President and CEO Marion Blakey said Wednesday.
“The aerospace industry is being overlooked as a job generator,” said Blakey. “Our benefits are global and don’t end at the water’s edge.”
An artist's conception of a Virgin Galactic flight above Spaceport America in New Mexico
Spaceport officials seek way to reduce liability
Las Cruces Sun-News
New Mexico spaceport officials said Wednesday they’ll again seek legislation that would effectively reduce legal liability for companies that launch from Spaceport America.