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Travel has long had an environmental cost: gasoline, jet fuel, spandex pants for bicycling. With space tourism soon to become a common occurrence, what will be the environmental price? More »
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SpaceShipTwo, a Virgin Galactic plane, may be ready to make regular commercial flights to space within twelve months. More »
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Here's Virgin Galactic's SpaceShip Two cruising over the Mojave Desert last Thursday. The VSS Enterprise spacecraft didn't travel into suborbital space but stayed affixed to its mothership. Virgin's planned price for a few minutes of suborbital views? $200,000. More »
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Tonight marks a historic event: Virgin Galactic will unveil SpaceShipTwo, the first crewed commercial spaceship set to fly the extraterrestrial skies, at the Mojave Air and Spaceport. Get a sneak peek at the ship before its debut. [Gizmodo] More »
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For those who felt that Virgin Galactic's plan of passenger spaceflight fell down due to the lack of provision for satellites, relief is at hand: The company has announced that they will be adding private satellite launches to their offerings. More »
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Never mind the thrill of commercial flights into orbit, the true excitement of Virgin Galactic's plan to make spaceflight open to the world will be the new way their crafts use to get there, apparently. More »
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Right now, the final frontier of space is only open to a select few. But in the coming decades, you won't need to be a supersoldier to go into orbit. You'll just need your wallet. More »
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Say what you will about Sir Richard Branson — at least he uses his billions to help other people have fun, not just himself. That's the quality that makes him the prime funder behind space tourism, a brand new phenomenon that will let regular folk head to the stars for the first time. Well, regular folk with 200 grand up their sleeves, that is. After the recent unveiling of Branson's Virgin Mothership, we have to ask: Exactly how far are these new space tourists going, and does Paris Hilton's Virgin Galactic ticket really make her equal to the likes of Yuri Gagarin? More »
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Here's the new SpaceShipTwo, unveiled today by space tourist pioneer Burt Rutan. Like SpaceShipOne, the new ship will ferry tourists to the edge of space on Virgin Galactic, Sir Richard Branson's new venture. 2008 will be "the year of the spaceship," promised Branson. WhiteKnightTwo, a four-engine plane, lifts the spaceship high into the sky, and then it burns a mixture of nitrous oxide and rubber-based fuel to make it up to the black. Click through for a video of SpaceShipOne, the original Virgin Galactic ship. More »
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An artist will create in zero gravity for the first time in 2009. New Zealand's Makoure Scott won a spot on the Virgin Galactic's first flight by submitting a portfolio of his Maori-influenced work (and by paying $200,000.) Scott's work messes around with geometric shapes, as in this sculpture, exhibited in 2006. [Spaceport News] More »
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