An artist's conception of a Virgin Galactic flight above Spaceport America in New Mexico

Building Spaceport America begins
The Las Cruces Bulletin

The centerpiece of Spaceport America will be the 130,000-square-foot Terminal Hangar Facility to house Virgin Galactic’s fleet of spaceliners. Passengers will board a rocketship attached to the center of a jetpowered, twin-fuselage “mothership.” They will be flown to an altitude of about 50,000 feet and launched – dropped like a bomb – from midair. With a hybrid nitrous oxide and rubber engine propelling them to about 62 miles above the ground, the sky will darken and the horizon curve.

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Space Panel Visits Marshall
The Huntsville TImes

The committee charged with evaluating NASA’s human spaceflight plans spent about half a day Thursday at Marshall Space Flight Center talking with engineers and program managers.

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India strides to space, eyes $120 mln/year business
Reuters India

India’s space agency plans to double its revenues to $120 million a year by increasing satellite launches to claim a bigger chunk of the global space business, the head of its space agency said on Friday…

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Entrepreneurs receive honors
The Hampton Roads Business Journal

Inside Business in conjunction with Regent University’s School of Global Leadership & Entrepreneurship hosted the 2009 Entrepreneurial Excellence Awards June 22 at The Founders Inn in Virginia Beach.

In all, 11 businesspeople received honors and Billie Reed, executive director of the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority, was given the 2009 Entrepreneur of the Year Award for his work to bring the authority from being 100 percent supported by public funds to 85 percent self-supported.

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The Space Elevator Games scheduled for July 14 at NASA Dryden have been postponed to early August due to “technical issues.”

A few choice exceprts from Ian Halperin’s new book, Guy Laliberté: The Fabulous Story of the Creator of Cirque du Soleil. The unauthorized biography recounts the drug, sex and hooker filled parties thrown by the Canadian billionaire, who is set to fly to the International Space Station in September.  The excepts were published in the Canadian weekly Maclean’s.

One of his close friends, “Jake,” recalls when Robert De Niro attended in 2001 while in town shooting the film The Score, which turned out to be legendary star Marlon Brando’s last flick before he died. De Niro was known for dating beautiful black women. “I rounded up the hottest black strippers, prostitutes and models in Montreal and invited them to Guy’s party,” Jake reveals. “Guy likes to do anything and everything to please his guests. He wants them to have the time of their lives at his parties. If he knows a special guest likes Italian wine, he’ll have the most expensive bottles flown in. These are bottles you’d never be able to get at a liquor store in Montreal. Guy pays attention to detail in everything he does. And he spares no expense.”

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PRESS RELEASE

Kennedy Space Center Director Robert Cabana will be the featured guest on the June 27 edition of “Space Talk with Jim Banke.” Cabana, a four-time shuttle astronaut, was named KSC chief in October 2008. The Minnesota native is a retired Marine colonel and was selected by NASA to be an astronaut in June 1985. Cabana is the space center’s 10th director.

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incentives2innovate Press Release

Leaders identify that our “risk averse” society stifles advancement and hurts economy

Playa Vista, Calif. (June 25, 2009) –The X PRIZE Foundation, with its partners BT Global Services, the John Templeton Foundation and the United Nations Office for Partnerships, recently hosted its first innovation conference – incentive2innovate (i2i) – for senior-level executives. The meeting was held at the United Nations in New York.

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Spaceport America’s recent groundbreaking generated enthusiastic crowds.

Plans for most isolated hotel in the world unveiled by students
Imperial College London News

Plans for a new international space hotel have been unveiled by students this month as part of a project for their Masters degree in Innovation Design Engineering (IDE).

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Exterior View of Genesis module

Space ‘Hotel,’ for Business or Pleasure, Takes Shape
ABC News

Imagine yourself, sometime in the next decade, with a fantastic idea for a new business that requires manufacturing in the weightlessness of space. Or maybe, having made your fortune on Earth, you’d simply like to vacation in a very high place.

The Russians charge upward of $50 million for a short trip to the International Space Station. NASA can’t help you at all. But there’s a Nevada company ready to offer a month’s stay in Earth orbit for $15 million — a bargain, considering that for 40 years, the cost of space travel has stubbornly refused to come down.

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Clark Lindsey over at Hobby Space points to this USA Today story about the acquisition of John Carmack’s id Software company:

id Software, the original garage band of game developers, now has a place to park its properties.

ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Bethesda Softworks, announced today that it will acquire the Mesquite, Tex.-based id. That means classic game franchises such as Doom and Quake will now sit alongside Fallout 3 and The Elder Scrolls in ZeniMax’s portfolio.

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