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Where very few have traveled yet - first, Tito, then Olsen and soon . . .YOU?

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In your dreams - no more

By the end of the decade, Virgin Galactic - the most exciting development in the story of modern space history - is planning to make it possible for almost anyone to visit the final frontier at an affordable price.

More details & video from Virgin Galactic's Updates page

By the end of the decade, Virgin Galactic - the most exciting development in the story of modern space history - is planning to make it possible for almost anyone to visit the final frontier at an affordable price.

Latest News Update

Virgin Galactic has unveiled its new logo, inspired by internationally renowned designer Philippe Starck, and at the same time announced that it will locate its world's headquarters and Mission Control in New Mexico. The agreement will also mean that the State of New Mexico will build a $200m spaceport...

The Galactic Experience

What do we think the experience of sub-orbital space tourism with Virgin Galactic will be like?

How do you think we might fulfil your dreams?

What will it be like?

How is this possible?

There were some key barriers to space tourism that Virgin have been keeping their eye on for almost ten years.

Now they're cracked, we'll show you the stars.

How is this possible?

Interested? Join up for email updates and Virgin Galactic will let you know more when the time comes.

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Space-travel rules being put into place
Government releases 123-page proposal to regulate tourist trips

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS  - December 30, 2005

WASHINGTON - Thinking of spending that next vacation on the moon or Mars or circling the Earth? Before liftoff, there's a list of things the would-be "spaceflight participant" should know.
     More than 120 pages of proposed rules, released by the government yesterday, regulate the future of space tourism, touching on everything from passenger medical standards to preflight training.
     Before teking a trip that literally is out of this world, companies would be reqauired to inform the "spaceflight participant" - knownin more earthly settings as a passenger - of the risks. Passengers also would be reqwuired to provide written conent before boarding a vehicle for takeoff.
     Legilation signed a year ago by President Bush and designed to help the space industry flourish at the outset without too much government interference requires the Federal Aviation Administration to conduvt a "phased approach" to regulating commercial human spaceflights.
     The first set of regulations, proposed yesterday - dealing with crew qualifications and training and informed consent for passengers - is expected to go into effect in June. Some other safety-related rules cannot by law be issued for eight years unless specific design features or operating practices are brought into question as a result of an incident causing serious injuries or a fatality.
     "This means that the FAA has to wait for harm to occur or almost occur before it can impose restrictions, even against foreseeable harm,: the proposal says. "Instead, Congress requires that spaceflight participants be informed of the risks."
     Physical exams for passengers are recommended but will not be required, "unless a clear public-safety need is identified," the FAA says in the proposed regulations.
     Passengers also would have to be trained on how to respond during emergencies, including the loss of cabin pressure, fire and smoke, as well as how to get out of the vehicle safely.
     The 123-page proposal was published in the Federal Register, the gobvernment's daily publivcation of rules and regulations, and will be subject to public comment for 60 days, through Feb. 27, 2006.
     Final regulations are expected by June 23, 2006. 

Dennis Tito's Rocket Ride    Disney World's Take-off On Space
Space Center Simulates Astronaut Training
Space Tourist, Olsen, Planned Work, Too!
A Space Traveler's Guidebook
Start-Ups Vie for Clear Skies
SPACE PACKAGE SPECIAL!

SPACE CENTER SIMULATES ASTRONAUT TRAINING

The Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex was upgraded recently with the addition of the ATX, or Astronaut Training Experience.

The ATX was developed with assistance from veteran NASA astronauts. The daylong program begins with an orientation and mission briefing by a member of the U.S. astronaut corps, followed by flight simulator exercises and a tour beyond the public areas of the space center to the NASA press site, the International Space Station Center and a position near the space shuttle launch pads. The experience culminates with a simulated team space mission.

Each participant in the program becomes a crew member and undertakes a series of exercises designed to prepare astronauts for space flight. The highlight is the one-sixth-gravity chair, which uses springs and pulleys to simulate a walk on the moon.

Also offered is the MAT, or multi-axis trainer simulator, which spins its occupant in random directions to simulate the feeling of hurtling through space.

Program trainers assign a role to each member of the team and the team members then take their places in a full-scale mock-up of the shuttle or a model of the mission control room. At the Zero-G wall, participants are outfitted with harnesses and weights that enable them to move around on a space station as if they were in a reduced-gravity environment.

Those who complete the program are given a photo of themselves with an astronaut, an ATX shirt and a diploma The cost of the program is $225.

* * *

In other news, the space center launched a 10-year development plan that promises several new attractions, rolling out at a rate of about one every two years.

The first component of the development plan is the $60 million Space Shuttle Launch Experience, which is under construction and slated to open in early 2007.

The following is a look at other themed attractions planned for introduction over the next decade:
   * A new hub called NASA Central, a multimedia facility with video screens transmitting launch briefings, mission updates and NASA news, will be the first area visitors see when entering the complex.
   * NASA;s Interplanetary Exploration 4-D Exhibit will show what it is like to monitor the progress of NASA's various source probes.
   * Visit to the International Space Station uses 3-D footage taken by astronauts of the space station and simulation technology to create a sense of being there.
   * Origins: A Journey to the Birth of the Universe will use multimedia, film effects, images from the Hubble Space Telescope and simulation effects to show other galaxies and shed light on theories of the origin of the universe.
   * Exploration of Our Home Planet will show how space exploration enhances understanding of weather, atmosphere, topography and natural resources.
   * The Moon, Mars and Beyond will focus on missions that are planned to return to the moon and to take astronauts to Mars.
   * The Space Shuttle Orbiter Exhibit will display a shuttle when the space shuttle program is discontinued.
   * The Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge Interpretive Facility will present a series of exhibits about the diversity of the plant and animal life in the wildlife refuge surrounding the space center.

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Space Tourist, Olsen, Planned Work, Too!

The next civilian to be rocketed into orbit at his own expense won't just be enjoying the ride.

Gregory Olsen, a scientist who made a fortune with optics inventions, planned some research during his $20 million trip to the International Space Station in April, 2005.

Olsen, the founder of Sensors Unlimited Inc. in Princeton, N.J., has hired Space Adventures, the Arlington County, Va.-based company that brokered the first space tourist trip, Millionaire Dennis Tito flew aboard a Russian spacecraft in 2001.

The 58-year-old Olsen told The Associated Press he plans to bring along infrared sensors, which detect varying levels of heat, to analyze pollution in the Earth's atmosphere and the health of agricultural systems on the ground.

At a news conference yesterday, he also said he wants to take the camera and "turn it around to look at the heavens and do infrared astronomy."

"I kind of feel this is a way of paying back," he said. The remote sensing experiment is "really what the buzz is for me," he said, "as well as the kick of being in space for a week."

Olsen also hopes the weightlessness of space will help him grow better versions of special crystals used in infrared sensors and other high-tech applications, though he hasn't finalized these plans.

He plans to publish his findings in scientific journals.

Olsen also aims to inspire young people with his mission and hopes to arrange a video hookup with Trenton High School in Trenton, N.J. and another school at the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana.

Olsen, who is divorced and single with a house in Princeton and a condo in the Time Warner Center in Manhattan, said his two grown daughters are supportive of the mission.

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Disney World's Take-off On Space

Last fall, Walt Disney World held the grand opening of Epcot's newest attraction, MISSION: SPACE. Designed with guidance from former NASA advisors, astronauts and scientists, the ride simulates the experience of an astronaut on a mission to Mars several decades in the future. Disney calls it the most technologically advanced attraction the company has ever created. Participants play the role of crew members of a space mission in 2036. The capsule whirls around, creating centrifugal force that feels like the G-force experienced by astronauts during liftoff. Passengers use interactive joysticks to pilot the vessel in a virtual-reality ride into space. Once entering space, passengers experience the sensation of weightlessness. The space-craft then makes a "slingshot" maneuver around the moon and hurtles toward Mars, where passengers view the planet's surface, an image created from data from the NASA mission of the Mars Odyssey spacecraft.

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Start-ups Vie For Clear Skies
Push is on to offer space flight!
by Chris Dovi
Times-Dispatch Staff Writer
Thursday, February 6, 2003

The EZ-Rocket displayed prominently at the Edwards Open House and Air Show

According to this article, the latest shuttle disaster hasn't slowed a growing grassroots movement to send backyard rocketeers into space.

"There has been a great bit of interest among space aficionados. That's not a huge group, but there has been a growing interest in taking people into space," said Chuck Kline, a spokesman with the Federal Aviation Administration's office of the associate administrator for commercial space transport.

"Commercial space travel is growing in interest and in capabilities," Kline said.

"Although only major world governments currently have the technology and funding to send people to space, private endeavors are close enough that Kline said, "the FAA is working to catch up with the needed regulations that will oversee the industry as it matures."

Among those private companies is XCOR Aerospace in Mojave, Calif.

"The FAA is in contact with 15 to 25 such companies that dream of touching the stars", Kline said, "but XCOR is closer than most. The company already has developed and tested a 400-pound thrust rocket engine and might be well on its way to designing a craft capable of reaching low Earth orbit."

"We're showing that you can fly a rocket-propelled vehicle multiple times a day for a reasonable price and with a small team of mechanics - not a large group of Ph.D.s in white coats," said Dan DeLong, vice president and chief engineer of the company.

The rocket-plane that XCOR is currently test-flying, the EZ-Rocket, is far from the company's final goal. Built around a somewhat common experimental plane normally powered by a rear-mounted propeller, the plane sticks to altitudes common to conventional planes. But the plane is not conventional. It is testing equipment designed to take the company's ideas much higher.

DeLong estimated that his company is still a few years from testing the Xerus, its prototype suborbital vehicle. But he said it's not so much a matter of it, as when.

"We're doing baby-steps," DeLong said.

"The next step is always a small one. Small steps are the only way in this particular line of work. The private rocketry industry has had its misfires," DeLong acknowledged.

He was a part of one early venture that got off the ground literally, but never could launch in the midst of its investors. Rotary Rocket Co. is a now-defunct corporation that was developing what looked like a 60-foot-tall salt shaker with a propeller on top.

"I myself had some questions about that design," DeLong said, noting that the launch pad after its bank accounts, atrophied.

That may not be all that's atrophied about some big-dreaming would-be rocketeers, but Chris Hall, an associate professor in Virginia Tech's department of aerospace and ocean engineering, said, "There are very good reasons to look to these upstart companies as the aerospace leaders of the future."

Questioning the government's ability to get the job done, he pointed to government study recommendations that came out of the Challenger disaster calling for a better launch vehicle. "That was 20 years ago and you see where we are now," he said.

There are lots of reasons for thinking that it has to be done by the government," Hall said, "but the real exploration of the past relied heavily on the sweat and risks of individuals. "I think NASA has done a lot of great things, but being a pioneer and being a pioneering country, this is what we have to do."

Despite NASA disasters, private companies are cranking on, and they're doing it with an optimism that makes their big government competitor look like a naysayer. While NASA's next-generation manned-flight push looks to 20 to 30 years out, XCOR and its competitor companies are dreaming in the 5-to-10-year range.

"Industry will do a better job," Hall said, calling the five-year timetable very possible, especially if NASA were willing to fund some of the private projects without attempting to take the reigns.

"I don't think they should just be throwing the money out to everybody willy-nilly, but the whole idea of commercial launch vehicles needs to be emphasized," he said. "Then NASA and the government would buy vehicles from those companies."

"Unless that government funding becomes available, the key to making private industry's space dreams a reality is finding other markets to support such flights. The only way to do that is to bring costs to a level attainable by more than just the fabulously wealthy," DeLong said.

XCOR plans to eventually offer tour flights of space for under $100,000 per passenger. Currently, it costs a minimum of $2 million to buy significant space on commercial rockets that carry only nonliving payloads such as scientific experiments of small satellites. Dennis Tito, the billionaire who became the first U.S. space tourist two years ago, paid more than $20 million to hop a ride on a Russian space hop.

XCOR's designs are for its Xerus suborbital vehicle, which could carry three people into the lower reaches of space, land safely and then relaunch within hours.

"The task of finding investors willing to sink money into such risky ventures is nearly as great as defeating the Earth's gravity," said the FAA's Kline.

"The problem is the whole chicken and egg thing," said Kline, who has watched many a venture come and go. "If they can't get their money, they can't afford to demonstrate their technology. And if they can't demonstrate the technology, they can't get their money."

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Dennis Tito's Rocket Ride

The First Space Tourist - Dennis Tito

Dennis Tito's rocket ride to the International Space Station April 29 - May 6, 2001, at a cost of $20 million has given cause for Space.com editor Fred Abatemarco to say that not only will we see more of this, but despite objections from NASA, Tito's flight on a Russian Soyuz rocket and sojourn at the space station has opened the flood gates for future tourist flights.

Then the company that helped broker Tito's trip, Space Adventures of Arlington, Va., advertised another seat on a Soyuz that blasted off for the space station last fall. Apparently, if you have $20 million, the seat could be yours, according to Space Adventures executive Larry Ortega. (But, you must train for six months and learn Russian and, perhaps, face more hurdles by June, when NASA says it will have finalized an agreement with the Russian Aviation and Space Agency and other space station partners on training requirements for "non- professional" visitors.)

Now, more than a dozen companies are racing to develop "suborbital" spacecraft that could be used for tourism. Space tourists could then spend just a few minutes in space before looping back to Earth at a cost that could be as little as $100,000 per trip. Ortega estimates that we could this happening in three years.

However, there's another vessel capable of taking tourists to space: NASA's space shuttle, but Bob Haltermann of the Space Transportation Association says one of the big "ifs" is whether NASA warms to the idea, and Kirsten Larson, NASA spokeswoman, says that "at this time, we have no plans to fly paying tourists aboard the shuttle."

To keep posted on NASA's stance, you can click on www.nasa.gov

Another site to watch is www.space.com

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A Space Traveler's Guidebook

"Frommer's The Moon: A guide for First-Time Visitors" (Macmillan, $10.95 paperback) written to coincide with the observance of the 30th anniversary of Neil Armstong's giant leap for mankind" on July 20, 1969. Published in July, 1999,  is billed as "a serious yet whimsical, lively and fascinating look at space travel".

Written by Werner's "Tiki" Kustenmacher and translated from the German by Peter Constantine, it is said to contain everything you need to know to travel to the moon, including the waiting list for space travel programs, what to pack, what to see, what to eat, how to sleep, and what kinds of artifacts you can take home as souvenirs.

It provides scientific facts about the moon and has information on space camps where you now can train for space travel: the U.S. Space Academy in Huntsville, AL; NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, CA; and Appolo Aerospace International in Daytona Beach, FL.

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SPACE PACKAGE SPECIAL!
How to Lose Weight in One Day

Shed those unwanted g-forces when you embark on a Zero Gravity Flight from SPACE ADVENTURES. You'll get official astronaut training and float in a zero gravity aircraft as you experience weightlessness firsthand.

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