Yes, as a P. W. Mothman has commented (on this earlier post) the Xcor customer is Danish born, UK resident Per Wimmer. Xcor cheekily, and perhaps at some risk, published the above photo but without caption so unless you knew Per you would not have known that he was the customer in question
I knew this when I published my post and thought I could break the news just before Xcor did today but it seems that the Daily Mail made it all public yesterrday – you can tell I’m not a Daily Mail reader
Remember: Hyperbola is now on twitter and by following Hyperbola on twitter you can find out the latest stuff being worked on and who has been talking too whomFor the non-UK readers of this blog the Daily Mail is a right wing reactionary newspaper that likes to set up hate figures for its readers and relies on a certain amount of Germanophobia for its coverage of anything European. Sadly it is also a very successful newspaper
But returning to Per. Like a number of other high net value individuals I have to got know him and them over the years because they ask people in my sort of job about the different space tourism players, their strengths and weaknesses and which are likely to get there first
As you’ll see from the Daily Mail article Per has spread his betting, to use a financial markets term, and bought, or certainly at least paid a deposit, with each of the companies that it could be argued have been in a leading position to deliver such a service at some point in time
If we do see suborbitial space tourism arrive in the next few years it will certainly lead to some of these tourists becoming household names. Whether their dream chasing leads to low cost access to space for everyone in the fullness of time is something I am not ready to bet on
