by David Todd | Feb 26, 2019 | Commercial human spaceflight, Personal spaceflight, Suborbital, Virgin Galactic
At 1607 GMT on 15 February a Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo Unity rocketplaine was air-dropped from its carrier aircraft Over the Mojave air strip in California, at. Aboard was David Mackay – the main test pilot and his co-pilot Mike “Sooch” Masucci (Co-Pilot). ...
by David Todd | Dec 14, 2018 | Commercial human spaceflight, Personal spaceflight, Seradata News, Virgin Galactic, White Knight
The US Air Force has traditionally awarded its pilots “astronaut wings” if they have exceeded 50 miles (80km) in altitude. Others who support this limit of where “space begins” include astrophysicist and spaceflight expert Dr Jonathan McDowell. He has eloquently...
by David Todd | Dec 13, 2017 | Blue Origin, Commercial human spaceflight, Personal spaceflight, Seradata News
A test flight of a new propulsion module version of Blue Origin’s New Shepard launch vehicle took place at 1659 GMT on 12 December. The “Mission 7” flight which did not quite hit 100 km (99.4 km achieved), thus would not be technically be counted as...
by Tim Fuller | Apr 26, 2017 | Blue Origin, commercial launch services, Personal spaceflight, Seradata News, Space tourism, Suborbital
Blue Origin took the opportunity in April’s Space Symposium event in Colorado to show off its New Shepard “space tourist” carrying capsule (named after NASA’s first suborbital astronaut) with which it plans to begin suborbital manned test...
by David Todd | Feb 27, 2017 | Commercial human spaceflight, exploration, NASA, Personal spaceflight, Seradata News, SpaceX
SpaceX has agreed to carry two private citizens on a trip around the moon late next year, probably with a SpaceX pilot astronaut accompanying them. The unnamed pair have already paid a significant deposit do this moon mission which will use a figure of eight free...
by David Todd | Dec 13, 2016 | Commercial human spaceflight, commercial launch services, NASA, Personal spaceflight, Soyuz, SpaceX
In what is rapidly becoming a farcical situation within the NASA commercial crew programme, SpaceX has now admitted that its commercial crew capsule, “Crew Dragon” (aka Dragon V2), will have its first flight delayed from May 2017 until November. This flight will be...
