Latest Space tourism Stories

RICHMOND, Va., Dec. 2 /PRNewswire/ -- Karen Kilyk of Covington International Travel in Virginia, a member of the prestigious Virtuoso® travel network, is among only 50 U.S. travel advisors invited to attend the world premier of SpaceShipTwo, the space vehicle developed by Scaled Composites to take private passengers to space. (Virtuoso is the exclusive retail travel agency network for Virgin Galactic throughout the Americas.) This exclusive event hosted by Virgin Founder and Chairman...

A top Russian space official said Thursday that there is no more room for space tourists hoping to fly to the International Space Station, The Associated Press reported.Sergei Krikalyov, the chief of the Cosmonaut Training Center, said since the space station's crew doubled to six people earlier this year, there is no longer room for tourists who pay tens of millions of dollars for a trip on a Russian spacecraft from Earth.After next year's planned retirement of the U.S. shuttle fleet,...

SOUTHAMPTON, Pa., Nov. 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Environmental Tectonics Corporation's (OTC Bulletin Board: ETCC) ("ETC" or the "Company") The National AeroSpace Research and Training (NASTAR) Center announced today an international contest for students to design a patch that will commemorate NASTAR Center's newest training program for suborbital scientist-astronauts who will fly aboard commercial suborbital spaceflights. The winning design will become the Official Patch for NASTAR's...

Just days after NASA ran a test launch of its spiffy new Ares I-X rocket at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, a small but devout band of creative space geeks have been trying their hand at rocket science in the middle of the Mojave Desert.On shoestring budgets that probably wouldn't suffice to pay the salary of NASA's personnel for a day, four privately sponsored teams have been competing in the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge for a chance to win $2 million in total prize money in...

The $35 million spent on the opportunity to travel into space is "worth every penny and more," says Canadian billionaire Guy Laliberte.Since launching from Kazakhstan aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket on Wednesday, the 50-year-old founder of Cirque du Soleil has spent time adapting to life in space, while preparing to highlight the issue of ensuring more supplies of clean water on Earth."Yes, it's worth every penny and more, I believe, because over and above doing it for myself, there's a...

On Oct. 4, 2004, the first privately manned spacecraft named SpaceShipOne, demonstrated that a rocket capable of carrying passengers could fly 62 miles above the earth and could do it twice in two weeks, according to the Associated Press. By showing its reliability and commercial viability, SpaceShipOne won the Ansari X Prize.Due to the success of SpaceShipOne, British mogul Richard Branson announced he would be using the technology for a second generation ship called SpaceShipTwo, under the...

Billionaire Guy Laliberte, the founder of the Cirque du Soleil show, said on Thursday that his trip next month to the International Space Station (ISS) would fulfill his boyhood dream of space travel, AFP reported.The 50 year-old entrepreneur "“ who spent millions from his own personal fortune to become the latest "space tourist" "“ said he was ready to blast off on the two-week mission into orbit.Laliberte said he was in bad shape when he arrived at Star City outside Moscow for training,...

SOUTHAMPTON, Pa., Aug. 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Environmental Tectonics Corporation's (OTC Bulletin Board: ETCC) ("ETC" or the "Company") National AeroSpace Training and Research (NASTAR) Center and the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) are leading a program that will provide spaceflight physiology training for prospective scientist-astronauts wishing to fly on upcoming suborbital space missions. The SwRI-NASTAR Suborbital Space Scientist course, which is similar to training courses...

A U.S. competitor in space tourism, Rocketplane Global, has abandoned its Oklahoma facilities and is struggling to stay in business, its chief executive said. The company fulfilled its 5-year, $18 million tax-break obligations to the state of Oklahoma by paying that much for 200,000 hours of design work, President and Chief Executive Officer George French told The Oklahoman. Falling short of its goal of bringing tourists into space, the company is moving to Wisconsin, the newspaper said....

Visitors at the EAA AirVenture convention in Oshkosh, Wisconsin on Monday got the first glimpse of a new aircraft that is being touted as the future of space travel.Virgin Galactic unveiled its WhiteKnightTwo aircraft, which the company plans to use in order to launch crafts into space.Developers of the craft, Burt Rutan and billionaire Sir Richard Branson were in attendance as WhiteKnightTwo soared through the sky as spectators snapped photographs.According to the Associated Press,...