http://www.newspacejournal.com Tracking the entrepreneurial space industry Fri, 05 Mar 2010 12:07:03 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en The news media has something of a case of amnesia when it comes to space tourism in Russia: they regularly, breathlessly report comments that Russia will stop flying space tourists on Soyuz flights to the ISS. Every few months, it seems, a Russian official makes comments to that regard, ... http://www.newspacejournal.com/2010/03/05/brief-notes-soyuz-virgin-and-icarly/ The web site Big Think has posted an extended interview with Burt Rutan, who talks about space tourism, innovation in NASA and the private sector, and other topics. I haven't watched the full one-hour interview in its entirety yet, but in the portions I've watched he covers some familiar ... http://www.newspacejournal.com/2010/03/03/burt-rutans-bigthink/ The entrepreneurial space industry has been big supporters—and beneficiaries—of prizes, from the Ansari X PRIZE and the Google Lunar X PRIZE to NASA's Centennial Challenges prize program. Now it looks the latter is going to get a lot more robust. After several years of not getting any funding, ... http://www.newspacejournal.com/2010/02/23/bigger-prizes-to-come/ Besides the developments by several vehicle operators, there have been a number of other announcements by various organizations at the Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference. The biggest, in the plenary speech by NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver, is that NASA has requested $15 million for the Commercial Reusable Suborbital Research ... http://www.newspacejournal.com/2010/02/19/other-conference-announcements/ In yesterday's sessions at the Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference in Boulder, Colorado, four major developers of suborbital vehicles presented updates on their efforts. Here's a summary of what they revealed: Virgin Galactic: Stephen Attenborough provided considerable details about their plans to flight test SpaceShipTwo (SS2). Ground testing will ... http://www.newspacejournal.com/2010/02/19/suborbital-vehicle-development-updates/ [caption id="attachment_1114" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Illustration of Blue Origin\'s orbital crew vehicle, designed to be launched on an Atlas 5, as shown on a NASA slide at an FAA conference last week."][/caption] One of the most intriguing NewSpace companies is Blue Origin, perhaps because they're also one of the most secretive. ... http://www.newspacejournal.com/2010/02/18/blue-origin-proposes-orbital-vehicle/ New Mexico and Virginia have been among the leading states in supporting entrepreneurial space efforts. New Mexico committed $200 million to develop Spaceport America and lure Virgin Galactic to their state; Virginia has supported the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS), bringing Orbital Sciences' Taurus 2 rocket there as well as ... http://www.newspacejournal.com/2010/01/21/virginia-wants-money-new-mexico-wants-laws/ As we noted here last week, Florida's Cecil Field has its spaceport license but is still in search of customers, thanks to the limited number of companies whose vehicles are qualified to use it and the current state of the industry. Cecil Field will have to compete against a ... http://www.newspacejournal.com/2010/01/17/what-can-florida-indiana-and-others-learn-from-oklahoma/ Last week the British consultancy Fast Future released a government-commission report titled "The shape of jobs to come". The purpose of the report was to identify potential new careers enabled by advances in science and technology. The report featured 20 such future careers (summarized in a separate fact ... http://www.newspacejournal.com/2010/01/17/is-space-tour-guide-in-your-professional-future/ An initial group of a dozen prospective scientist-astronauts will begin a two-day training program today at the NASTAR Center just outside Philadelphia in preparation for future flights on commercial suborbital vehicles. The training will include both classroom instruction and "altitude chamber training, multi-axes centrifuge training for launch and reentry ... http://www.newspacejournal.com/2010/01/12/training-begins-for-suborbital-scientist-astronauts/