I’m glad that this is happening, but personally, after I get my huge lottery win, I’ll wait on X-Cor’s Lynx, which has Rick Searfoss (real-life Space Shuttle pilot) as a test and development pilot. I have safety concerns about the Virgin efforts.

Have you looked into the Google Lunar X-Prize? There have been some really awesome breakthroughs there on getting a robot back to land on the moon.

Maybe he could get some advice from Andy Griffith, who launched a business recovering junk from orbit in 1979′s Salvage 1.

Of course there was that fellow who apparently put together a “Single Stage To Luna” vehicle with just two other people helping in Rocket to the Moon. (And then, just before he launched, the U.S. military confiscated it. “Guided missiles are government business — strictly government!”)

I don’t think space-related stories get much play on the broadcast news media these days. Of course, Sir Richard Branson is no slouch at self-promotion. So you could try here:

http://www.virgingalactic.com/

But I think your best bet is:

http://www.spacetransportnews.com/

Just a nit: Shouldn’t that be “the von Kármán line”?

We don’t say “the Allen radiation belts,” after all.

@21. Ray :

@ Neil, the Apollo 6 launch experienced significant problems, including shutdown of several engines inflight.

If I recall right, one of the engines on Apollo 13 shut down prematurely too and Apollo 12 had launch dramas when it was struck by lightning!

Both these missions were still successful launches because they got their spacecraft up there with Apollo 12 landing the third and fourth men to walk on our Moon – Pete Conrad and lunar artist astronaut Al Bean – whilst Richard Gordon orbited alone above them. Apollo 13 famously experienced later problems rendering it NASA’s finest hour and the greatest space survival story and Tom Hanks movie so far.

Richard Branson is one of those crazy dreamers, so I wish him all the success he can find.

But the Apollo 6 mission itself was still considered a success because the objectives were met. It wasn’t a total launch vehicle failure. I think they used the SPS engine to get the CM to the desired altitude.

the Apollo 6 launch experienced significant problems, including shutdown of several engines inflight.

No, it doesn’t. There have been some launchers which have or had 100% success rates – the best known one being the Saturn V, no less.

Saw this on the news last night and thought it looked good. Nice to have a positive human spaceflight story, a good news story full stop.

Hope it is a lot more successful than the Virgin F1 team currently is too!

(Although on checking the wiki-link, turns out Virgin doesn’t actually run that team just sponsors it so, anyhow.)

I suppose you could get a suicidal millionaire who wants to go out impressively.

One of the things about commercial space flight is that I’m expecting some bad accidents early on. I’m not doubting the intentions and safety programs of the companies involved. However rocket launches have a history of fairly high failure rates and that includes every launcher in the world.

An investigative outfit like the Transportation Safety Administration does a good job (all things considered) of investigating accidents and getting changes made that help prevent future accidents. This is the reason that air travel is one of the safest ways of travelling.

My guess is that the commercial, and especially passenger carrying, rocket business would benefit from some TSA-like oversight.

“How’s the new job?”
“Well the pays OK but you wouldn’t believe the commute!”

I’d still go in a heartbeat.

Not all that aware of her. Why is she crazy?