Image credit: Virgin Galactic

BBC reporter Jonathan Amos has posted an interesting article about Virgin Galactic’s proposed LauncherOne. The satellite launcher system would use WhiteKnightTwo (SpaceShipTwo’s mothership, pictured above) to carry a staged payload to 12 km, before releasing a booster stage which would carry the satellite all the way into low Earth orbit.

By Tracy Norris

Do you fancy being on the first commercial flight into space, powered only by laughing gas and rubber?  85,000 potential customers have already registered to be the first customers on Virgin Galactic’s White Knight, Spaceship One to do just that. 

For a mere $200,000 you too can experience a two and a half hour flight that will leave the earth’s atmosphere and allow you to experience weightlessness.  According to  Will Whitehorn, Virgin Galactic’s President, you will then “return to earth to receive the official U.S. Government astronaut wings and a nice cup of tea”!

Whitehorn delivered his lecture to an audience at Edinburgh Napier University this week on the Virgin Galactic project in which he reassured listeners that the cost of a ticket is expected to drop gradually to just $90,000 per person, making this a relatively ‘budget’ space travel option for the future.  To put this in context, the first commercial airplane flights at the turn of the 20th Century cost the equivalent of $85,000 in today’s money.

But space tourism is only one aspect of Whitehorn’s business model.  With a launch cost in the region of $1 million, versus N.A.S.A.’s shuttle cost of around $1 billion, Virgin Galactic is set to become the most affordable way to get people, satellites and equipment into space.

The White Knight, Spaceship One designed by Burt Rutan using his Scaled Composites materials, can potentially be used for scientific research, space training, technology tests and demonstrations, small satellite orbital launch as well as tourism.  A satellite launch currently costs N.A.S.A. around $50 million.  Virgin Galactic is aiming to get this cost down below $5 million.  They already have 7 space science customers signed up.  Whitehorn predicts an “industrial revolution in space”.

 The SpaceShip Two rocket that will be airborne launched from the mothership ‘Eve’  is due to be unveiled at Virgin Galactic’s Spaceport America in New Mexico on 7th December 2009, with a first flight scheduled for January 2010.    Whitehorn will be on board along with engineers, but the first commercial flight into space isn’t expected to take place for a further 14 months.

So, of the 300 passengers who have already paid a deposit of between $20 and $200k each to secure their place on board, who gets to be on the first commercial flight into space?  Richard Branson will of course be there.  If all goes according to plan, so will 91 year old Professor James Lovelock, the famous Gaia theorist and close friend and adviser to Branson.  Professor Stephen Hawking will also join them, health permitting.   According to Whitehorn, both world-renowned scientists will be the only passengers to be offered the flight free of charge, “Lovelock because he can’t afford it, and Hawking because he deserves it”.

By Tracy Norris

Do you fancy being on the first commercial flight into space, powered only by laughing gas and rubber?  85,000 potential customers have already registered to be the first customers on Virgin Galactic’s White Knight, Spaceship One to do just that.

For a mere $200,000 you can join the queue and experience a two and a half hour flight that will leave the earth’s atmosphere and allow you to experience weightlessness.  According to  Will Whitehorn, Virgin Galactic’s President, you will then “return to earth to receive the official U.S. Government astronaut wings and a nice cup of tea”!

Whitehorn delivered a lecture to an audience at Edinburgh Napier University this week on the Virgin Galactic project in which he reassured listeners that the cost of a ticket is expected to drop gradually to just $90,000 per person, making this a relatively ‘budget’ space travel option for the future.  To put this in context, the first commercial airplane flights in at the turn of the 20th Century cost the equivalent of $85,000 in today’s money.

But space tourism is only one aspect of Whitehorn’s business model.  With a launch cost in the region of $1 million, versus N.A.S.A.’s shuttle cost of around $1 billion, Virgin Galactic is set to become the most affordable way to get people, satellites and equipment into space.

The White Knight, Spaceship One designed by Burt Rutan using his Scaled Composites materials, can potentially be used for scientific research, space training, technology tests and demonstrations, small satellite orbital launch as well as tourism.  A satellite launch currently costs N.A.S.A. around $50 million.  Virgin Galactic are aiming to get this cost down below $5 million.  They already have 7 space science customers signed up.  The business model certainly looks like it will work but it was the space tourists who brought the critical early investment in.

The mothership is due to be unveiled on 7th December 2009, with a first flight scheduled for January 2010.    Whitehorn will be on board along with engineers, but the first commercial flight isn’t expected to take place for a further 14 months.

So who gets to be on the first commercial flight into space?  Richard Branson will of course be there.  If all goes according to plan, so will 91 year old Professor James Lovelock, the famous Gaia theorist and close friend and adviser to Branson.  Professor Stephen Hawking will also be aboard, health permitting.   According to Whitehorn, neither world-renowned scientist will have to pay for the flight, “Lovelock because he can’t afford it, and Hawking because he deserves it”.

An Excerpt of the following article was published in Ad Astra Volume 20 Number 2 in the summer of 2008.

The Precipice of a Private Space Revolution

By Ian Murphy

It’s fitting that the National Space Society will hold its annual International Space Development Conference, a space conference best known for the access it grants the general public to space industry leaders, in the city of Washington DC during such a pivotal time in American political history.

The 2008 election will soon pit a smart, fresh, up and comer with a pulse on the here and now against a Senator and POW with 40 years of hands-on experience working within the civil and military complex.  Fair or not, the previous represents the future – and the latter the establishment.

It seems the passing of the torch between the past and future is now palpable and imminent.  The days of the greatest generation and their baby boomer children is ending. For first time in a long time the present ruling class won’t get to choose it’s successor; their mark, good or bad, has been left.

The theme of the ISDC 2008 is “The New Pace of Space.”

Before the conference I think it’s appropriate to take a look back at what the pace has been like since aerospace began.  We do this to make sure we 1) don’t go any slower than the fastest pace we’ve previously achieved – if we do we are most certainly moving backward and 2) to learn from the successes, as well as the mistakes, that have been made along the way – not the engineering failures but instead the human and societal flaws that accompany innovation cycles.

Five years after the Wright Brother’s first flight, very few people in the world still believed that flight was even possible. The reason many people were still doubtful was that the Wright Brothers actually refused to demonstrate their newly invented technology until they had a firm long-term production deal in place for fear that their innovative concepts would be stolen, reproduced and sold for a lesser price. In the end it was the U.S. Army who bought their concept and made plans to put the flying vehicles into service.

As part of the deal, the US Army sent the Wright Flyer on a European tour.  Paris, in 1908, was the modern day New York City.  The cultural, economic and political epicenter of the world and when the first airplane flew over those famous shops and cathedrals, it was the spark that launched the aviation industry.  What was also happening during that remarkable period of industrial growth was that young children, in the prime of impressionability, were seeing this flying machine and beginning to dream of where to go next.

Some of the most influential people in the history of early aerospace were all children during this five-year period.  William Allen, John Atwood, Karel Jan Bossart, Hugh L. Dryden, George Goddard, Robert H. Goddard, Theodore von Karman, James H. Kindelberger and Sergei Pavlovich Korolev.  These men were the forefathers of the rocket and space industry that would begin to take shape forty years in the future.

In 1927, just twenty years after the famous Parisian flight of fancy, it was Charles Lindbergh’s transatlantic solo flight that inspiring the first generation of test pilots and astronauts that would operate the technology and rocket powered vehicles the names mentioned above would soon create.  Within just one year of this famous flight, the number of pilots tripled, the number of airplanes quadrupled and the number of tickets sold increased by a factor of 30!  Some of the young children listening to the accounts of Lindbergh’s voyage on the radio included future pioneers like Buzz Aldrin, William Anders, Neil Armstrong, Frank Borman, Werner Von Braun, Konrad Dannenberg, Michael Collins, Kerim Aliyevich Kerimov, Scott Crossfield, Krafft A. Ehricke, Vasily Pavlovich Mishin, Dr. Robert R. Gilruth, Yuri Gagarin, Bill Pickering, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard and Jim Lovell.

In less than thirty years the pace of space would become frenetic.  Before the wake of the industrial revolution and the technological boom that accompanied two World Wars had subsided, the Soviet Union would launch Sputnik and a great race to space between the world’s two largest superpowers had begun.

Over the next twenty years, each individual mentioned above would play a vital role in the success of the first manned mission to space.  The pinnacle achievement being the Apollo 11 mission landed Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstong on the moon.  More than 500 million people watched this live on television with millions more tuning in worldwide on their radios for what is commonly referred to as the greatest technological achievement in human history.

The pioneers of space industry found a way to win when the odds were stacked against them – they were willing to literally risk their lives and their careers to advance the human species towards the stars.  In the two largest sectors of the space industry, this environment no longer exists.

Remarkably, the average age of the people that worked on the Apollo program was 26.   In 1993 the average age of the crew that flies on the space shuttle was 36.  Today it is 47 and the technicians and engineers on the shuttle program average 54 years of age.

The same people who brought us to the moon are still the primary decision makers and operators of the civil space program   The fact is there are sparsely any 26 year-olds in the space business anymore – there are very few 36 year-olds.  Where is the next generation of motivated intelligent young mavericks whose ambition to succeed drowns out the 535 member Board of directors for the civil space program, each of whom have their own separate agendas? Why has the pace slowed to such a halt that in 2010 there will be no manned space vehicle operating in the United States for the first time since 1961?

However, there is hope.  It has been existing on the fringes of the space industry for decades and finally given consideration and credibility in 2004 when the first privately funded and privately built vehicle flew to the edge of space and back twice in two weeks winning the $10 million Ansari X PRIZE and effectively silencing the giggle factor in the debate of space tourism forever.  Already there is 1.7 Billion in investment committed in private spaceflight that is not government at all.  And it certainly is profitable, when you fly people at 200K per passenger on something that you can actually operate for 1/10 or less of that cost.

There are three pace setters that will be part of the speaking lineup for ISDC 2008 that represent vital and unique pillars of a new commercial space industry and its worth taking a closer look at their lives, philosophies and accomplishments.

The Innovator

Born in Estacada, Oregon, thirty miles southeast of Portland, and raised in Dinuba, California, Burt Rutan displayed an early interest in aircraft design.

By the time he was eight, Rutan was designing and building model aircraft and by sixteen he was flying solo.  In 1965 he graduated third in his class from California Polytechnic University with an aeronautical engineering degree.

From 1965 to 1972, Rutan worked for the U.S. Air Force as a flight test project engineer.   For the next two years he became the director of the Bede Test Center for Bede Aircraft, in Newton, Kansas.

Rutan struck out on his own in June of 1974 with the creation of the Rutan Aircraft Factory in the Mojave, California where he designed and developed prototypes for a number of aircraft, mostly homebuilt. It was here that Rutan would create his first masterpiece.

The Voyager aircraft was designed and fabricated Rutan Aircraft Factory for a single mission: Fly around the world non-stop and without refueling.  The result was an airplane with a structural weight/gross weight fraction significantly lower than any existing man-rated airplane and a cabin large enough to accommodate only the crew of two plus provisions.  In December 1986, Rutan’s brother Dick and Jeana Yeager took off from Edwards Air Force Base in California and flew around the world in nine days. The Voyager was retired and now has the honor of hanging in the Milestones of Flight exhibit in the National Air and Space Museum main exhibit hall with the Wright Flyer, Spirit of St. Louis, Bell X-1 and a future Rutan craft – SpaceShipOne.

In April 1982, Burt Rutan founded Scaled Composites, LLC.  Here he would focus on creating aircraft and eventually spacecraft that could push boundaries of what is possible for flight.  His most famous aircraft would fly higher for longer than ever before.

Proteus is a twin turbofan high altitude multi mission aircraft designed to carry payloads in the 2000-pound class to altitudes above 60,000 feet and remain on station up to 14 hours.  Missions for Proteus include telecommunications, reconnaissance, atmospheric research, commercial imaging, and space launch.  Proteus would eventually be the prototype for the first stage airplane that would carry SpaceShipOne a few years later.

Rutan made headlines again in June of 2004 with White Knight and SpaceShipOne.  Rutan would launch SpaceShipOne twice in a two-week period to win the $10 million Ansari X PRIZE – an eight-year space tourism competition for the first private spaceship capable of carrying the weight equivalent of three people to the edge of space and back within two weeks without replacing more that 10% of the vehicles hardware.   The craft embodies Rutan’s unique style and now also hangs in the National Air and Space Museum.

This achievement was quickly commercialized — Virgin Galactic, an offshoot of Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, announced that it will begin space tourism flights in 2008 using craft based on the designs of SpaceShipOne. Dubbed SpaceShipTwo, these new craft will carry six passengers to more than 70 miles above the earth to experience sub-orbital space. The first test flights are currently scheduled for 2009 and passengers are expected to be carried starting in 2010.  The price of the ticket: $208,000

On March 3, 2005, the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer, an aircraft similar to the Voyager design, but with stiffer materials and a single jet engine, completed the first solo non-stop, non-refueled flight around the world with billionaire adventurer Steve Fossett as pilot. Reducing weight was critical to the design, and Rutan is quoted as facetiously telling his staff that when they finish building a part, they must throw it up in the air for a weight test, and “If it comes down, it’s too heavy.”

Between February 7, 2006 – February 11, 2006, Fossett and the GlobalFlyer set a record for the longest flight in history: 41,467.53 km (26,389 miles), the third absolute world record set with this aircraft before being flown to the NASM Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. Global Flyer is the sixth vehicle designed by Burt Rutan in the NASM collection.

Rutan’s vehicles, while famous are not what make him an icon.  He is engaging, controversial, inspiring, sharply intelligent and wickedly funny.  The following is an excerpt from a speech Rutan gave at a TED conference in 2006:

“Houston we have a problem.  We’re entering a second generation of no progress in terms of human flight in space; in fact we’ve regressed.  We stand a very big chance of losing our ability to inspire our youth to go out and continue this very important thing that we, as a species, have always done, and that is instinctively we’ve gone out and climbed over difficult places went to more hostile places and found out later, maybe to our surprise, that that’s the reason we’ve survived.

I feel very strongly that it’s not good enough for us to have generations of kids that think that it’s ok to look forward to a better version of a cell phone with a video in it.  They need to look forward to exploration, they need to look forward to colonization and they need to look forward to breakthroughs.

We need to inspire them because they need to lead us and help us survive in the future.

My critics say

“Hey Rutan is just is just spending all these billionaires money on joyrides, this isn’t a transportation system, it’s just for fun.”

I used to be bothered by that but I got to thinking, I bought my first apple computer in 1978 and I bought it because then I could say…

“I got a computer at my house and you don’t.”

“Well what do you use it for?”

“Come over it does Frogger!”

Not the banks computer or Lockheed’s computer but the home computer was for games, for a whole decade we didn’t know what it was for but the fact that we had this big improvement in capability, we were ripe for a new invention and then Al Gore came along and invented the internet an because of that something that we used for a whole decade for fun became everything – our commerce our research our communication and if we let the Google guys think for another couple of weekends we can add a dozen more things to the list. It won’t be very long before you won’t be able to convince kids that didn’t always have computers in our homes. So fun is defendable.

The Entrepreneur

Elon Musk is a co-founder of PayPal and founder of Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX). He is also chairman of Tesla Motors and SolarCity.

Born June 28, 1971 in South Africa, Musk is the son of a South African engineer and a Canadian-born mother who has worked as a New York City dietitian and modeled for fun. His father inspired his love of technology enough so that Musk bought his first computer at age 10 and taught himself how to program code.  By the age of 12 he sold his first commercial software, a space game called Blaster.

He left home in 1988 at the age of 17, without his parents’ support, and in part because of the prospect of compulsory service in the South African military: “I don’t have an issue with serving in the military per se, but serving in the South African army suppressing black people just didn’t seem like a really good way to spend time,”

He headed toward the US, saying: “It is where great things are possible. I am nauseatingly pro-American.” Leaving South Africa he first went to Kingston, Ontario where he enrolled at Queen’s University, barely scraping by on as little as $1 a day with part-time and summer jobs. He then landed a prestigious scholarship to the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. “Tuition costs are outrageous . . . Fortunately, they gave me a scholarship . . . so I only had to cover living expenses, books, etc., by working.” From Wharton he received an undergraduate degree in economics and stayed on another year to finish a second bachelor’s degree in physics.

His undergraduate degrees behind him, Musk then considered three areas he wanted to get into that were “important problems”, as he said later, “One was the Internet. One was clean energy and one was space.”

In 1995, Musk went on to a graduate program in high-energy physics at Stanford, in which he stayed exactly two days before dropping out to start Zip2, which provided online content publishing software for news organizations. In 1999, Compaq’s AltaVista division acquired Zip2 for US$307 million in cash and US$34 million in stock options. Elon and his brother Kimbal held about 12 percent of Zip2 at the time.  In March 1999, Musk co-founded X.com, an online financial services and email payments company. One year later, X.com merged with Confinity, originally a company formed to beam money between Palm Pilots and the combined entity focused on email payments through the PayPal domain. In February 2001, X.com changed its legal name to PayPal. In October 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay for US$1.5 billion in stock. Before its sale, Musk, the company’s largest shareholder, owned 11.7% of PayPal’s shares.

In June 2002, Musk founded his third company, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), of which he is currently the CEO and CTO. SpaceX develops and manufactures space launch vehicles, with an emphasis on low cost and high reliability.  The company’s first two launch vehicles are the Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 rockets.

In addition to his business activities in entrepreneurial space, Musk is the principal owner and Chairman of the Board of Tesla Motors, which aspires to build cost-effective electric automobiles for the mass market. He is also the primary investor and Chairman of the Board of SolarCity, a photovoltaic products and services startup company. The underlying motivation for funding both companies is to help combat global warming.

His long-term goal is that SpaceX helps humanity become a true spacefaring civilization.

Musk is a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board, a Director of the Planetary Society and a Trustee of The X-Prize Foundation.  In 2005, Musk acquired a 10% share of Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL), a world leader in the design, manufacture and operation of high performance small satellites, majority owned by the University of Surrey, UK. Musk is Chairman of the Musk Foundation, which focuses its philanthropic efforts on science education, pediatric health, and clean energy.

The Explorer

Anousheh Ansari was born in Iran and lived there until she was 16.  She spent her childhood staring at the sky and dreaming of space.  She came over the states after the overthrowing of the Shah did not allow her to attend school anymore.  She didn’t speak a word of English.

She earned a bachelor’s degree in electronics and computer engineering from George Mason University, followed by a master’s degree in electrical engineering from George Washington University. She has an honorary doctorate from the International Space University. She is currently working toward a master’s degree in astronomy from Swinburne University.

Anousheh Ansari is co-founder and chairman of Prodea Systems, a company that will unleash the power of the Internet to all consumers and dramatically alter and simplify consumer’s digital living experience. Prior to founding Prodea Systems, Anousheh served as co-founder, CEO and chairman of Telecom Technologies, Inc.  The company successfully merged with Sonus Networks, Inc., in 2000.

To help drive commercialization of the space industry, Anousheh and her family provided title sponsorship for the previously discussed $10 million Ansari X PRIZE.

On September 18, 2006, Anousheh Ansari captured headlines around the world as the first female private space explorer. Anousheh earned a place in history as the fourth private explorer to visit space and the first astronaut of Iranian descent.

Anousheh is a member of the X PRIZE Foundation’s Vision Circle, as well as its Board of Trustees. She is a life member in the Association of Space Explorers and on the advisory board of the Teacher’s in Space project. She has received multiple honors, including the World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, the Working Woman’s National Entrepreneurial Excellence Award, George Mason University’s Entrepreneurial Excellence Award, George Washington University’s Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award, and the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for Southwest Region. While under her leadership, Telecom Technologies earned recognition as one of Inc. magazine’s 500 fastest-growing companies and Deloitte & Touche’s Fast 500 technology companies.

She currently works to enable social entrepreneurs to bring about radical change globally, with organizations such as X Prize, ASHOKA and the PARSA Community Foundation.

On August 1-2, 2007, Anousheh hosted a unique and innovative team of individuals and organizations to collaborate on enhancing the state of global education. This team’s mission is to effectively bring about positive change in the way our youth are educated, encourage imagination and increase their interest in science and a variety of technical topics. We have created this community to develop collaborative projects which bring the best that each of us have to offer, in order to develop an inter-sectoral program of actions to overcome the challenges in education that we are facing today. We hope to share valuable ideas and projects with a global community that brings in a variety of perspective to this common problem and helps lead us to new, revolutionary ideas.

She believes the key to a better future for humankind is in the hands of our young generation, and it is up to us to provide them with the right tools through education and as good role models. Through it all, Anousheh continues to quote Gandhi, one of her personal heroes, who said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

The three visionaries mentioned above are paving the way for future innovators, entrepreneurs and explorers.  Their actions are driving the industry and therefore the human species to a bright future full of discovery, challenge and adventure.  Their common hope is that young children, in the prime of impressionability, will see what they’ve done and begin to dream of where to go next.

Not much. It was a political stunt. On the other hand, look at this curve. Sure, it flatlines under supersonic, but in the next few years as we jump to suborbital, it will resume its previous trajectory. That’s why SpaceShipOne is the craft that’s really remarkable.

Latest Update: August,12th 2009

Michael Schumacher
http://www.arabianbusiness.com/564040-schumacher-latest-to-sign-up-for-galactic-trip

The list is a secret. Yet a few names are known.  This is the most comprehensive list on the internet and I hope I will be able to complete it over the next couple of months. If you come accross any passengers names please send email to petepalme@gmail.com or leave it in the comment section.
Come and join the spaceship group on Linkedin:

16 Flights to carry all 100 Founders in a period of 8 months. This means
4 of the founders act as copilots otherwise a minimum of 17 flights would carry all 100 Founders.
1st official Flight:
1) The first passengers: Sir Richard Branson, Sam Branson (son) Holly Branson (daughter) and parents  (UK)
Owner of Virgin and Virgin Galactic
Date of flight: late 2009 or 2010
No Linkedin Profile, Article in Wikipedia
Pilot of the flight: Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger
Place of start: Majave-Dessert in California

Speculation: Will Anousheh Ansari be on the first flight or James Lovelock

2) -100) Passengers who deposited the full amount of 200 000 USD are called Virgin Galactic Founders.

Second official flight togther with Sir Richard Branson:
2) Victoria Principal in USA.
Actress
Date of flight: 2009/2010
Article on Wikipedia

3) Brian Singer in USA.
Hollywood Director
Date of flight: 2009/2010

4) Princess Beatrice  of York (UK)
Date of flight: 2009/2010
Article on Wikipedia

5) Ibrahim Sharaf  (United Arab Emirates)
Sharaf Group  President
Date of flight: 2009/2010

6) Anousheh Ansari (USA) Origin: Iran
Electrical Engineer
Date of flight: 2009/2010
Article on Wikipedia    Profile on Linkedin
Website

Next shuttles: ??

??) Wiliam Shatner (USA)
Actor
Date of flight: 2009/2010
Article on Wikipedia

??) Sigourney Weaver
Actress
Date of flight: 2009/2010
Article on Wikipedia

??) Loretta Hildago Whitesides (USA)
Director of US Operations, Space Generation Advisory Council
Date of flight: ??
Profile on Linkedin
??) George Whitesides (USA)
Executive Director at National Space Society
Date of flight: ??
Profile on Linkedin

??) Matthew D. Upchurch (USA)
Virtuoso CEO
Date of flight: A lottery system will determine Upchurch’s official launch date  Travel Agency: Virtuoso
Profile on Linkedin

??) Alan Walton (USA)
Date of flight: 2009/2010

??) Ken Baxter (USA)
Real Estate Marketing Executive
Date of flight: ??
Profile on Linkedin

??) Matthew Pritzker (USA)
Owner of Venture Capital firm
Date of flight: ??

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

??) Glenys Ambe (Australia)
Fashion Retailer
Date of flight: ??

??) Mark Rocket (New Zealand)
Owner at Avatar Ltd / NZS.com Ltd / Rocket Lab Ltd
Date of flight: 2009/2010
Profile on Linkedin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

??) Jackie Maw (New Zealand)
Realestate Agent
Date of flight: 2009/2010 ??) Igor Kutsenko (Russia)
Owner Advertising Agency
Date of flight: ??

??) Sergei Tyaglov (Russia)
Owner Advertising Agency
Date of flight: ??

??) ?? (China – Zhejiang province)
Date of flight: 2009/2010 

??) ?? (China)
Date of flight: 2009/2010

??) Craig Burkinshaw (UK)
Audley Travel Boss
Date of flight: ??
Profile on Linkedin 

??) Alan Watts (UK)
Managing director GE
First to trade in his 2 000 000 Frequent Virgin Flyer miles
Date of flight: 2009/2010
Profile on Linkedin

??) Trevor Beattie (UK)
Advertising
Date of flight: 2009/2010   

 

??)Bill Cullen (Ireland)
Country – Ireland
Irish businessman and philanthropist. He owned the Renault Ireland franchise until it was taken under more direct control by Renault in 2007. Reality TV Show host.
 
Wiki – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Cullen_(businessman)
 
Newspaper article about Bill cullen and Virgin Galactic; http://www.independent.ie/unsorted/features/rocket-man-1318322.html

??) Tom Higgins (Ireland)
Irish Psychics Live Boss
Date of flight: ??

?? ) Rubens Barrichello (Brazil)
Formula 1 Pilot
Article on Wikipedia

??) Xavier Gabriel (Spain)
Lottery Vendor
Date of flight: 2009/2010

??) Sonja Rohde (Germany)
Date of flight: 2009

??)  Peter Ulrich von May (Switzerland)
Asset Manager
Date of flight: 2009/2010  Travel Agency: ??
Interview

??) Noriaki Inami (Japan)
System Engineer
Date of flight: 2009/2010

??) ?? (Japan)
Date of flight: 2009/2010

?/) Namira Salim (Pakistan)
Artist and Humanitarian
Date of flight: 2009/2010
Interview

2 free tickets for:

??) Stephen Hawking (UK)
Astrophysicist
Date of flight: ?? 
Article on Wikipedia

??) James Lovelock (UK)
Scientist
Date of flight: 2010
Article on Wikipedia

Free ticket winner:
??) Doug Ramsburg (USA)
Date of flight: ??

1 ticket in exchange for work

??) Philippe Stark
Designer
Date of flight: ??
Article on Wikipedia

A video on myspace showing some of the founders after the training at NASTAR.
One of the founders in the centrifuge training.
Some more faces of the founder astronauts.
If you know the name please send to petepalme@gmail.com.

Status February 6, 2009:
A few customers have asked for their deposits back, including one person who lost all his money in the Bernard Madoff scandal. “He could say to us that actually we were one of only investments he’d made that hadn’t gone bad” because he was able to recover his $200,000, Whitehorn said.
Reference: http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1304/1

To ensure they can handle the 3 g on the way up, and up to 6 g on the way down, Virgin is testing its would-be space tourists’ resilience in a centrifuge. Two of the first 100 customers have failed the tests. “They weren’t medically up to it,” says Virgin president Will Whitehorn.Forces can get much higher, though.  Reference: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026805.900-space-tourism-flies-into-a-legal-black-hole.html?full=true

101-500) Passengers who deposited at least 100 000 USD are called pioneers.

??) Paris Hiltion (USA)
Date of flight: ??
Article on Wikipedia

128)Edward Roski Jr (USA)
Real Estate Developer
Date of flight: ??     Travel Agent: Crack Buck – San Diego

501) onwards: Passengers who deposited 20 000 USD = 10% of ticket fee are called Voyager

??) Lina Borozdina-Birch in USA
Chemist
Date of flight: ??

??) Richard Laronde (USA)
Owner Event Planning Business
Date of flight: ??   Travel Agency: ASA in New York

??) ?? USA Origin: India

??) ?? USA Origin: India

??) John Criswick (Canada)
CEO Magmic Games
Date of flight
Profile on Linkedin

??) ?? (Canada)

??) ?? (Canada)

??) ?? (Canada)

??) ?? Auckland lottery-winner beneficiary (New Zealand)
Date of flight: ??

??) Franz Kaiser in Switzerland. Location: Egg
Date of flight:  2011   Travel Agency: Deluxetargets
Profile on Linkedin
Pilot of the flight: ??
Place of start: Majave-Dessert in California

??) ?? in Switzerland

??) ?? in Switzerland

??) ?? in Switzerland

??) ?? in Switzerland

??) Per Wimmer  (Denmark)
Investment Bank Owner
Date of flight: 2010
Profile on Linkedin

??) Parents of Igor Kutsenko (Russia)
Date of flight: ??

??) Timur Artemyev and his wife (Russia)
Date of flight: ??

??) ?? Russia

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??) ?? Russia

??) ?? Russia

??) ?? Russia

??) UK Origin: India

??) India

??) ?? China

??) ?? China

??) ?? China

??) ?? China

??) ?? China

??) ?? China

??) ?? China

??) ?? Japan

??) ?? Japan

552) Scott Borden in USA
Space Agent at Virgin Galactic, www.spaceagent.us
Date of flight: ??    Travel agency: www.spaceagent.us
has trained at the NASTAR center in Pennsylvania
Profile on Linkedin

Virgin is sticking by their ticket price of $200,000 and expects to offer lotteries and other means of democratizing the opportunity, including a reality-TV game show that is now under development.
http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-space/article/2006-09/unveiled-virgin-galactics-new-ride

Speculations about passengers:

1) Madonna

2) Tom Hanks

3) Lewis Hamilton

4) Sheik with family

5) Peter Brabeck (Chairman Nestle)

CEO of Virgin Galactic: Will Whitehorn

References:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2007-05-07-space-tourist_N.htm
Linkedin Search for Peoples with keyword Virgin Galctic
http://www.nzz.ch/nachrichten/panorama/destination_weltall_1.1926213.html
http://www.markrocket.com/
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20080623/111778580.html
http://skinnymoose.com/adventurist/2008/10/28/paris-hilton-signs-up-for-virgin-galactics-first-sub-orbital-space-flight/
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/177889,branson-unveils-spaceship-two-design.html
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/12/20/europe/EU_GEN_Spain_Lucky_Stars.php
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-14927623.html
http://femalesoldiers.greyfalcon.us/Space.htm
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/IK02Df03.html
http://spaceagent.us/blog.html/14
http://spacetourists.blogspot.com/2008/03/lottery-winning-beneficiary-im-heading.html
http://www.virtuoso.com/The+Company/Virgin+Galactic+Forum+at+the+Nastar+Center/
http://first-irish-astronaut.net/article.aspx?more=1
http://www.personalspaceflight.info/2007/07/19/space-tourism-developments-in-canada-and-india/
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070718.wspace18/BNStory/specialTravel/home
http://www.money.co.uk/article/1002118-danish-banker-to-become-first-affordable-space-tourist.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5345872.stm
http://news.opodo.co.uk/articles/category/lighthearted_travel_news/2007-05-08/18141770-Space-tourist.php
http://www.space.com/news/060828_spaceshiptwo_next.html
http://www.skycontrol.net/airlines/sparks-fly-as-virgin-atlantic-announces-worlds-first-frequent-flyer-astronaut/
http://www.nastarcenter.com/news/view.php?volume=2&issue=3&article=96
http://ehotelier.com/hospitality-news/item.php?id=P14205
http://www.raumfahrt24.de/Artikel2/200512140764.html
http://www.tmm.de/top-magazin-hamburg/?p=495
http://www.parkavenuespacetravel.com/
http://www.ttgasia.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13309
http://www.chicagospace.org/ISDC2006.html
http://first-irish-astronaut.net/news.aspx?uid=89691a6b-a250-4151-80c4-1e857d7f56b9
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4263789a11.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/3322683/Science-Richard-Bransons-race-for-space-tourists.html
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/media/90/cosmos-founders-be-australias-first-space-tourists
http://www.studentshangout.com/index.php?s=99b184bf40cc777570867429e07d2d94&showtopic=27783&pid=190017&st=0&#entry190017
http://spaceagent.us/blog.html?pg=5&cnt=5&t=a
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/editors-choice/2009/01/10/scotland-s-first-astronaut-on-his-trailblazing-journey-into-space-86908-21029675/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15921347/
http://travelvideo.tv/news/more.php?id=A10269_0_1_a2006111_Mhttp://www.parabolicarc.com/2009/04/27/virgin-galactic-aims-sell-50000-space-tourism-seats-10-years/ 
http://www.parabolicarc.com/2009/04/26/branson-signs-up-formula-1-racers-for-space-tourist-flights/
http://jv.gilead.org.il/forum/2008/01/0071.html

 

Further topics:
Article on Wikipedia on the manufacturer of spaceship two

How does the spaceship interior look like ?
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2007/05/spaceship_2_int.html

What does the training look like ?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/09/03/virgin_space_tour_training_deal_inked/
Training at NASTAR: http://noolmusic.com/myspace_videos/centrifuge_nastar_virgin_galactic_bj.php

The future competitors are:
EADS Astrium, Rocketplane Limited, Space Adventures, and the Benson Space Company, Dassault Aviation

Spaceship Industry:
http://www.sete.gr/files/Ebook/2006/Dest._Space_Tourism_Goehlich.pdf
http://www.space-travellers.de/index.php?wohin=rocketplane
http://www.incredible-adventures.com/edgeofspace.html

Russia was the first country to pioneer space tourism! It started in 2001 to offer flights on the sojus rocket.

Travel Agencies:
Dubai headquartered, Sharaf Travel, the official Accredited Space Office for Virgin Galactic

The country that is home to the largest number of ticket buyers is the United States, followed by the United Kingdom, Japan, Russia, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Spain, and Ireland. In terms of the proportion of Virgin Galactic customers per capita, the top three countries are New Zealand, Ireland and Denmark.

Of the customers who have signed up so far, 15 percent are female, Wincer’s statistics show. Ten percent of total customers booked through a travel agent, but 30 percent of the bookings have been received via Virgin Galactic “Accredited Space Agents” — an initiative launched in January of this year, she said. Accredited Space Agents are registered travel agents who have been specially selected and fully trained on all aspects of the Virgin Galactic offering.

As for Accredited Space Agents (ASAs) around the world, the numbers are as follows:

• Australia has nine travel agencies and about 30 travel consultants.
• New Zealand has one national chain with 10 consultants.
• Japan has one agency with five consultants.
• The United States has 47 consultants from about 45 agencies, all of these are members of Virtuoso, a leading leisure travel network.
• Canada has six consultants from four agencies (who will be trained next week in Vancouver and are all Virtuoso members).
• The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has one agency with about 12 consultants.
• Then add one agency and two to three consultants from each of the following who are all being trained this week at the International Space University: Austria, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, the United Kingdom, Russia, Israel, and the Czech Republic.
  http://www.space.com/news/070703_virgingalactic_sales.html

spaceship one from Burt Rutan

??) Bill Cullen (Ireland)
Date of flight: 2009/2010
Irish businessman and philanthropist. He owned the Renault Ireland franchise until it was taken under more direct control by Renault in 2007. Reality TV Show host.
 
Wiki - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Cullen_(businessman)

 
Newspaper article about Bill cullen and Virgin Galactic; http://www.independent.ie/unsorted/features/rocket-man-1318322.html

??) PJ King  (Ireland)
President PJ King Investments

Zombies invade Austin; hero alerts the public

Space Ship One, can I fly it?

Via Gizmodo

Here is an article which includes some text about Burt Rutan’s Raptor UAV.
www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1993/1993%20-%202623.html

Just accidentally when searching about Raptor UAV (this is off-topic to this posting, but anyhow contains interesting information including patent numbers), I found this: Burt Rutan’s CV. Needless to say “Burt Rutan is my hero”, but here is the CV of Mr. Rutan:

http://www.roycecarlton.com/speaker/Burt-Rutan-Curriculum-Vitae/

I was reading news stories this morning and came across this one on FoxNews.com:

Oddly enough, it’s Monday, December 22, 2008, 9:20am CST right now as I type, which is 7:20am PST.  Somehow FoxNews has an article saying the WhiteKnightTwo took off and landed already, an hour before it’s reported takeoff time?  I looked at the bi-line and it does say Monday, December 22, 2008.  And the article does say “today” right there in the first sentence.

The problem is… this all happened yesterday morning.  Oops.

Congrats to the team at Scaled Composites.

Its 6:30 in the morning, when words flow like buttter….sort of.

Its been a busy week for the private space travel movement. Virgin Galactic unveils the White Knight two carrier plane , the first part of two part system for sending tourists into space. Then at the Oshkosh air show, XCOR Aerospace flew the Rocket Racing League’s first rocket powered aircraft. Finally SpaceX launched the Falcon 1 rocket. Unfortunately they had a second stage separation problem.

I am now convinced that the old multi-stage rocket method of getting into space is a royal pain in the ass and should be replaced. We know airplanes. We know how to fly really large and heavy things with them. We know how to drop something out of them. It just works. Even rocket powered airplanes are viable.

I was saddened to witness the anticipation and the failure of the Falcon 1. Friends and family were there at the SpaceX rocket factory, all ready for a good show. But delays kept postponing the launch. THe sadness in their eyes after the rocket’s failure, especially in Elon Musk’s, was heart-wrenching.

So let’s put my futurist hat on. I predict that Scaled Composites/Virgin Galactic will have a near monopoly in human space transportation for a few years. XCOR will be second, as they get more funding to build bigger, more reliable rocket powered aircraft. I would not be surprised that Scaled hired XCOR for a future generation Space Ship X vehicle to fly under a White Knight X. NASA, desperate to keep the space station going after the shuttle retires (they have already destroyed the repair facility in Palmdale, and are breaking down other infrastructure in other places), will at first waste another few billion taxpayer dollars on a human launch system, and fail. They will then consider Scaled/XCOR as a viable Plan B, since outside of the Russians, they are the only American game in town. This happens in less than 15 years.

Virgin Galactic will lease a habitat from Bigelow Aerospace to create the first true space hotel, albeit it will be more of a log cabin or a hostel in its first iteration.

It may take twenty years before a competitor appears to go up against Virgin/Scaled. Burt Rutan has 30 years aircraft experience to support him, and it will be hard to beat that fact.

Jeff Foust went to Mojave on Monday for the WK2 rollout.  He posted some great pictures of the featured bird.  I was pleased to see from his pictures how healthy Burt Rutan looks after his heart troubles over the past year.

Most newsworthy was Jeff’s interview with Burt himself, in which Burt said that development of SpaceShipTwo has been on hold since the Scaled accident of July 26, 2007 (hard to believe it’s been a year).  Burt did say that the accident investigation is now complete.  He indicated that the lessons learned will result in significant design changes for SS2.

It’s always been my hope that humanity can embrace a glorious future among the stars. I just wish we’d get a move on. Thankfully, on Monday Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic opened the hangar doors to reveal WhiteKnightTwo, the launch vehicle that is intended to begin the sub-orbital journey for passengers aboard SpaceShipTwo in eighteen months’ time.

Until recently, space travel was the sole preserve of governments, and very few of those at that. Then came the Ansari X Prize offering $10 million for the first ship to reach an altitude greater than 100 km twice in the space of a fortnight. Many teams took part, but on 4 October 2004 it was Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites that took the money with SpaceShipOne.

Branson and Rutan teamed up; fast forward four years and for the princely sum of $200,000 you can buy a seat along with two pilots and five fellow passengers that will give you a view of the curvature of Earth from space and about five minutes of weightlessness. And let’s not forget the rush of the launch and then the glide back down to collect your spacewings.

SpaceShipTwo is still in the hangar, apparently 70% built, but WhiteKnightTwo is expected to begin flight tests later this year. It’s like a catamaran for the skies, with two hulls that between them will carry the space vehicle to a height of 15 km before its hybrid rocket engine lifts it to sub-orbital altitude. At first, Virgin Galactic aim to manage a flight each week, but when everything is up and running at full capacity there should be four flights a day from their New Mexico spaceport.

Branson’s mother officially christened the launch vehicle – it was named “Eve” after her, as well as symbolizing a new beginning for space exploration (let’s hope Apple stays well away from the computer systems). WhiteKnightTwo could also herald a new age in more traditional aviation, being the largest all carbon composite aircraft with the huge benefits in efficiency that promises.

Apparently more than a hundred future Virgin Galactic astronauts are fully paid up and ready to fly. My name officially went on the list on 28 September 2004, but they’ve still not asked me to show them the money. Maybe, if my astronaut application with the European Space Agency comes through, I won’t have to.

Richard Branson is again in the news for his Space Tourism initiative as Virgin Galactic unveiled the newest incarnation of its Space aircraft on Monday called “WhiteKnightTwo.” Branson described the rollout of WhiteKnightTwo as an event that:

“

… takes the Virgin Galactic vision to the next level and continues to provide tangible evidence that this most ambitious of projects is not only for real but is making tremendous progress towards our goal of safe commercial operation

“

Virgin Galactic has been the most research heavy and outspoken proponent of Space Tourism and along with California-based aerospace company, Scaled Composites, the duo have created the world’s largest carbon composite aircraft boasting a wingspan 140 feet. Adhering to the Space 2.0 maxim that the technology must be of immediate and consistent application, the WhiteKnightTwo can support a maximum altitude of more than 50,000 feet and will be able to deliver up to four daily spaceflights. Read the entire article here.

Richard Branson and Burt Rutan rolled out the carrier aircraft for their space tourism venture yesterday. Named the White Knight Two, it is a large four-engined jet of unorthodox design, as is Rutan’s habit in all of his shop’s designs. For all of my hesitations about Branson’s endless self-promotion and carrying on, I admire this venture very much, and it demonstrates how two maverick figures like this can advance the state of the art faster than the whole rest of the American aerospace establishment, which has been stagnant in many ways since the North American X-15, and its derivative the Space Shuttle, were designed and flew over thirty years ago.

As an aside, it is worth noting that the X-15 set its record altitude in 1968 (50.6 miles) and its record speed in 1967 (4,519 mph) – over forty years ago! Only in 2004 did Rutan’s SpaceShipOne exceed the X-15’s altitude mark on its fifteenth flight, and set its own mark of 69.6 miles two flights later. Its maximum speed was no match for the X-15, however, although that was not their goal.

Back to my point, the rollout of the White Knight Two displayed the plane’s livery for the first time, and a striking feature, to my spotter’s eye at least, is the repeated motif of a series of aircraft in profile, on the outboard side of the pylons and underneath the plane’s twin booms.

A bit of googling reveals that Virgin galactic calls this the “DNA of Flight” and I quite admire it. The Space Fellowship indicates the emblem is “inspired by Phillipe Starck,” but I can find no further confirmation of this. Virgin kindly offers this closeup among their press materials. The graphic on the web site omits the top image, which is clearly the Whte Knight Two mated with the forthcoming sub-orbital SpaceShipTwo. Beneath that is the 2004 Rutan SpaceShipOne, and below that the Grumman Lunar Module, first flown in 1968. I take the next image to be a Boeing 747, which makes sense as it was a milestone for commercial aviation and it is also a mainstay of the Virgin Airlines fleet. Below that is, to my eye, the most interesting silhouette of the group, and it triggered this post. I first took it to be a Bell X-1, the first plane to break the sound barrier. A moment’s glance made me rethink that, as the proportions are wrong, the taper and shape of the fuselage, nose, and tail are wrong, and the swept leading edge of the wing with its tip extensions all do not fit. What then? The lack of inlets on the plane is distinctive, and that set my mind to a 1950’s Dinky model of a fairly obscure French plane that was among my father’s toys. The Leduc 010 was a very advanced pioneering effort in ramjet research, which took place immediately after World War II. Like the Rutan effort, it relied on a mothership and the original Leduc featured the same ‘wiffleball’ portholes as the SpaceShipOne used for pilot visibility. I could well be wrong about my Leduc suggestion, and if you have another suggestion, or can confirm it for sure, I ask you please to comment below with what you know. Below the Leduc one finds Lindbergh’s Ryan NYP “Spirit of St. Louis”, a Wright Flyer, and (presumably) Daedalus. I suppose it could be Icarus, but since he crashed, I imagine Virgin imagines it to be his more temperate father.

My hat is off to Virgin Galactic for this stylish emblem, which is wonderful shorthand for the generations of pioneering aviators and aircraft that have paved the way for Virgin Galactic’s bold plans to bring fare paying customers into space.

One final aside: Bill Sweetman has a post this morning on my favorite blog evah, Ares, entitled “White Knight Two and Responsive Space.” It is a valuable look at why this plane it not just a Branson stunt, but could be the basis for a very transformative change in the utilization of space. Worth a read.