May 18th, 2011 at 6:00PM:
Historical implications aside, one of the most impressive and important aspects of Richard Branson's upcoming private space line is its distinct mode of atmospheric re-entry.
Thanks to a breakthrough design by legendary aerospace engineer Burt Rutan, Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo is one of the first craft to utilize a technique known as "feathered flight" to acheive a safer, more stable ...Click on a label to read posts from that part of the world.
space posts
Virgin Galactic releases first "feathered flight" video
May 18th, 2011 at 6:00PM:
Historical implications aside, one of the most impressive and important aspects of Richard Branson's upcoming private space line is its distinct mode of atmospheric re-entry.
Thanks to a breakthrough design by legendary aerospace engineer Burt Rutan, Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo is one of the first craft to utilize a technique known as "feathered flight" to acheive a safer, more stable ...Space race brings trip around the Moon by 2015
May 8th, 2011 at 7:00AM:
We've heard of suborbital flights being booked by Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, those have been in the works for quite some time. So have various plans for a replacement vehicle for the retiring space shuttles. Now, the news about space travel brings us to the Moon with a flight around the moon available coming up as soon as 2015 says one company already in the business.
Space ...Forgotten space pioneer: 50th anniversary Alan Shepard's historic flight
May 5th, 2011 at 9:30AM: Fifty years ago today Alan B. Shepard Jr., became the first American in space when he flew in the Freedom 7 mission. He got 116.5 miles up and his flight lasted 15 minutes, 28 seconds. He made history, but has been generally forgotten.
Why? Because he was the second man in space. Yuri Gagarin made it into space 23 days earlier and won the second round of the US-Soviet space race. The Soviets ...Space tourism celebrates tenth anniversary
Apr 30th, 2011 at 9:00AM:
Space tourism is ten years old this week. On 28 April 2001 millionaire Dennis Tito became the first person to go into space as a tourist and not an astronaut or scientist.
In an interview with BBC today he talked about how thrilled he was and called his eight days being in orbit "paradise."
While space tourism is the ultimate in high-cost adventure travel--only seven people have done it so ...Second-to-last Space Shuttle launch is big tourism draw
Apr 28th, 2011 at 8:30AM:
Tomorrow's launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavour has turned into a major tourist event, the Associated Press reports. NASA estimates half a million people will show up for their second-to-last chance to see a shuttle launch. Other estimates vary from 250,000 to a whopping 700,000. That could rival the crowds that came to see the first Moon mission.
Hotels are sold out and homeowners near ...Video of the day: The Mountain, El Teide, Spain
Apr 20th, 2011 at 5:00PM:
The Mountain from Terje Sorgjerd on Vimeo.
This video by Terje Sorgjerd, called "The Mountain", came into my Tumblr feed yesterday. I've watched it several times since that first breathtaking viewing and I'm still in awe. This time lapse video was filmed on El Teide--Spain's highest mountain. The mountain is reportedly one of the best places in the world to view the stars and the Teide ...
Virgin Galactic sets sights on orbital spaceflight
Dec 16th, 2010 at 4:30PM:
The stakes in the commercial space race just got a little loftier. Today, Virgin Galactic officially announced plans to team up with two U.S companies in pursuit of developing a commercial manned orbital spacecraft.
Backed by fearless entrepreneur Richard Branson, Virgin Galactic has chosen to support Sierra Nevada Space Systems (SNC) and Orbital Sciences Corporation (OSC) under NASA's ...NASA wants hypersonic plane, puts aside $15 million
Nov 5th, 2010 at 1:30PM: If NASA gets its way, layovers will become a thing of the past. It has plans in the works to develop hypersonic jets that would surpass the speed of sound by a factor of five. What's the implication? Well, you get on a plane in New York and get off in Sydney a mere two and a half hours later. That's a cut from the current flight duration of 21 hours, according to The Daily Mail. In addition to ...First craft lands at Spaceport America (Exclusive Video)
Oct 26th, 2010 at 8:30AM:
The future of travel is one step closer to taking off. Last Friday, Spaceport America officially dedicated its recently completed tarmac by welcoming two craft to land in front of a large crowd of Spaceport officials, future astronauts, and press.
Gadling was on-site to witness history as Virgin Galactic's spaceship VSS Enterprise, carried by mothership White Knight II, made a dramatic ...Virgin Galactic launcher delayed
Oct 2nd, 2010 at 1:00PM:
We've covered space tourism company Virgin Galactic a lot here on Gadling. What hasn't gotten so much discussion is LauncherOne, a rocket that would take off from the WhiteKnightTwo mother ship, the same ship that carries SpaceshipTwo. While SpaceShipTwo is a space plane that would detach from the mother ship and fly into the high atmosphere, LauncherOne is a more conventional rocket that would ...Moscow-based company to create an orbiting hotel for space tourists
Sep 29th, 2010 at 2:00PM: Seems like the booking of space tourism isn't that far off.
According to the Associated Press, Moscow-based Orbital Technologies announced its bid to help drive tourism to outer space by building an orbiting hotel in space.
The planned Commercial Space Station can serve as a tourism hub for travelers, and also provide accommodations for astronauts and cosmonauts working on the International ...Boeing enters the space tourism market
Sep 17th, 2010 at 11:30AM: Aerospace giant Boeing announced on Wednesday that it is entering the space tourism market by selling extra seats on future flights to the International Space Station. The company has developed a "space taxi" that will shuttle astronauts to the ISS once NASA officially retires the Space Shuttle sometime next year, and is partnering with Space Adventures, a company that has a history in organizing ...Space tourism one step closer with Virgin Galactic's first manned flight
Jul 18th, 2010 at 9:00AM:
The VSS Enterprise, also known as SpaceShipTwo, has taken its first crewed flight. It stayed in the air for six hours attached to its mother ship, the VMS Eve. Two crew members stayed aboard and conducted systems tests. This is the latest aviation milestone in an active month that saw the first overnight flight by a solar airplane and the first unmanned solar plane to fly for a whole week.
...GadlingTV's Travel Talk - Atlantis Launch, Wakeboarding, Seaworld, & Magic Playoffs!
Jun 14th, 2010 at 12:00PM:
GadlingTV's Travel Talk, episode 18 – Click above to watch video after the jump
In our last Orlando installment, we showed you the retired side of life in Orlando - and now we're going full throttle.
Because Orlando is famous for its theme parks, we discuss the biggest, best, and most bizarre theme parks around the world. We'll tell you where you can pay to wear a ...Space tourism already getting cheaper!
May 14th, 2010 at 8:00AM: Space tourism may still be a few years from taking off (pun fully intended!) but competition is already bringing the price down dramatically. According to this story from MSNBC, a company known as Space Adventures has partnered with Armadillo Aerospace to make space tourism relatively affordable. In this case, "affordable" means $102,000, which is almost half the cost of rival Virgin Galactic's ...Space travel: closer than you think?
Mar 6th, 2010 at 3:15PM: We all know about the various parallel efforts pushing forth into space tourism -- Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin and SpaceX, to name a few, are developing multi-million dollar platforms to one day take the average civilian out into space. But we also know about the cost involved. Virgin Galactic has already taken hundreds of deposits at $200,000 each, a price that most people would find ...
Take a tour of the known Universe
Dec 19th, 2009 at 9:00AM: Ever ponder your place in the Universe? Asked the question "What's out there?" Then this video is definitely for you. It was created for the Hayden Planetarium, located in New York City, and shows the entire known Universe, to scale. Be warned though, it can be quite a humbling experience. The video begins by hovering over the Himalaya, the tallest mountains on Earth. Soon, the camera begins to ...
Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo (Photos)
Dec 8th, 2009 at 9:00AM:
December 7th, 2009; there's a good chance it won't be remembered as a milestone in history. But it can certainly be marked as a major stepping stone in the human endeavor of space exploration.
At roughly 5.30pm on Monday evening, Richard Branson, Burt Rutan, Governor Schwarzenegger and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson proudly rolled out Virgin Galactic's first test flight ready spacecraft. ...Virgin Galactic preps SpaceShipTwo
Dec 2nd, 2009 at 1:30PM: Virgin Galactic continues its march toward bringing space tourism to the (wealthy) masses and is reportedly putting the finishing touches on SpaceShipTwo, the vehicle that will take adventurous, and well heeled, travelers into sub-orbit. According to this story from the Telegraph, test flights are scheduled to begin in early 2010, with regular flights getting underway in 2012.
SpaceShipTwo is ...Journey to the dark side of the moon
Oct 7th, 2009 at 1:30PM: On this day fifty years ago, humanity got to see something it had never seen before. On October 7, 1959, the Soviet space probe Luna 3 orbited the moon and took photos of the "dark side". Of course, everyone already knew that the dark side isn't really dark. It gets just as much light as the side we see, but since it always faces away from Earth we've spent the last hundred thousand years ...
