tagged w/ Space Flight
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Flying through space is quite common for a little girl named Christine Joyce. CJ even builds her own spacecraft.Flying through space is quite common for a little girl named Christine Joyce. CJ even... more
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With just a weather balloon, some polystyrene an iPhone and a video camera, Luke Geissbuhler and his seven-year-old son Max experience the blackness of space - and it didn't involve Max risking his life.With just a weather balloon, some polystyrene an iPhone and a video camera, Luke... more
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THE week before last, a falcon was launched into space: Elon Musk’s privately financed Falcon 9 heavy-lifting rocket. This week, a different falcon returned from the void. On June 13th, Hayabusa, as the bird is known in Japanese, streaked through the night sky of southern Australia to deliver to Earth what researchers hope will be the first sample of rock collected from the surface of an asteroid.
Most of the craft burned up on re-entry. But a small part, protected by a heat shield made of carbon-phenolic resin, survived and landed in the desert near Woomera. This capsule, it is hoped, will contain material from Itokawa, a half-kilometre-long asteroid whose orbit crosses the Earth’s.
One up, then, to JAXA, Japan’s space agency. Indeed, two up, because on June 10th it successfully deployed Ikaros, a solar sail attached to a small satellite in orbit round the Earth.
In the short term, the mission to Itokawa was the more spectacular of the two. It was dogged by bad luck, ranging from solar flares to boulder-strewn landing fields, and returned to Earth three years late. But return it did, having been nursed through its traumas by a patient ground team at JAXA’s mission-control centre in Tsukuba.
http://www.economist.com/node/16374480THE week before last, a falcon was launched into space: Elon Musk’s privately... more
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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) - A Texas company is joining a venture that New Mexico Spaceport officials say will bring down the price of space tourism - to just $100,000 per flight.
Rocket Racing, Inc., the company that hopes to stage NASCAR-style races in the sky, is joining Rockwall, Texas-based Armadillo Aerospace to offer suborbital space flights from $100,000 or cheaper.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) - A Texas company is joining a venture that New Mexico... more
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Virgin Galactic is the world's first spaceline. Giving you the groundbreaking opportunity to become one of the first ever non-professional astronauts. Virgin Galactic will own and operate its privately built spaceships, modelled on the remarkable, history-making SpaceShipOne.
Virgin's vast experience in aviation, adventure, luxury travel and cutting-edge design combined with the unique technology developed by Burt Rutan will ensure an unforgettable experience unlike any other available to mankind.
With safety at the forefront, our unique spacecraft is being designed at Rutan's base in Mojave, California alongside a concerted research and development programme.
"The deal with Mojave Aerospace Ventures is just the start of what we believe will be a new era in the history of mankind, one day making the affordable exploration of space by human beings a real possibility." Richard Branson.
It is these spaceships that will allow affordable sub-orbital space tourism for the first time in the history of the universe.
http://www.virgingalactic.com/
Virgin Galactic is the world's first spaceline. Giving you the groundbreaking... more
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