Trekking around the World is very much a part of being a Flight journalist and I’ve drawn together the many travelogue blogs I’ve accumulated over the last couple of years from going to French Guiana in South America, Kennedy Space Center in Florida, China’s capitol Beijing, the US state of New Mexico, New York city, Moscow, Kazakhstan (sort of) and Germany and Italy
In June this year I was in Italy as the sole journalist invited to participate in a Global Exploration Strategy meeting between the world’s major space agencies
Beijing, China beckoned for the International Academy of Astronautics’ Humans in Space symposium that saw me gain access to the country’s astronaut training and research center – and I found some time to go to the Forbidden city and Tiananmen square
With the 2009 start of operations for Russia’s Soyuz rockets from French Guiana it was time in March to visit that south American territory that is French.
This video shows the construction site for the Soyuz launch pad near Sinnamary
and this video shows the Ariane 5 launch pad near Kourou
Last November (2006) and October I was in New Mexico covering the X Prize Cup with a live blog, but sadly I took no video so get a feel for the place from this Popsci.com video of the X Prize Cup 2006 event
While in NM I also covered the space elevator competition , the personal spaceflight synposium, and I found some time to wander through spaceflight history visiting the White Sands Missile Range museum
Before I headed out to the US I had gone to Valencia in Spain to report on the 57th International Astronautical Congress.
Before witnessing the bleached colours of Mediterranean Valencia I got to witness something entirely different on the raucous Virgin Atlantic/Galactic press trip to New York.
In July 2006 the temperatures were high but I was cool in the space pavilion getting to know the Chinese delegation and their slightly strange habits.
Early in July I had got to go to Kennedy Space Center with ESA but missed the delayed Shuttle launch and saw England knocked out of soccer’s World Cup
April usually sees me going to the National Space Society’s National Space Symposium in Colorado and this event saw me finally meet Buzz Aldrin but it didn’t go quite according to plan.
At Kennedy Space Center in February I managed to ask Sir Richard Branson one question at the event for the Virgin Atlantic sponsored Globalflyer flight and didn’t actually get to meet its pilot Steve Fossett on this trip and sadly now I guess I never will. Watch a video of the Globalflyer on the Space Shuttle runway, filmed by me.
My last trip of 2005 was to Kazakhstan for ESA’s GIOVE-A launch . The trip started out nicely enough with dinner in a restaurant;
near Red Square;
Sadly the rest of the trip didn’t quite go to plan. Diverted due to bad weather over Baikonur cosmodrome we landed at a regional air strip and waited…
In 2005 I had two blogged trips, one to a micro air vehicle conference in Germany in September and the other in August on a week long trip with UK and Russian students around the notable space companies.
