Tag: Virgin Galactic

XCOR Lynx – Tech Digest's Space Plane of the Week

We literally cannot get enough of the burgeoning “space plane” scene.

The idea of getting onto a plane and ending up IN SPACE is simply too exciting to comprehend. There’s the small matter of the £100k it’ll cost to get on board, but we’ll surely have saved that much by 2010 – when the XCOR Lynx here is supposed to be ready to go into service.

The plane itself is designed to take off from a regular runway…

Gary Cutlack Space, Vehicles

EADS wants "production line" of space planes! Crack out the silver tracksuit – we will be in space soon

EADS, or the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company, has said it can see a day when space travel becomes as routine as paying £17.99 to go via RyanAir to Amsterdam for a three-day stag-do.

“It will develop towards a classical aeronautical business model. Someone will build the planes; somebody will operate them; somebody will sell the tickets; somebody will provide the accommodation – like any tourism,” said Robert Laine, the chief technical officer of the rocket builder. A division of EADS called Astrium, which currently makes the Ariane rocket, reckons it’ll be knocking about 10 “space planes” a year to sell to operators.

Here’s an entirely unrelated photograph of the space shuttle Endeavour in which you can clearly see an astronaut’s iPod through the window:

space-shuttle-ipod-window.jpg

So hopefully, before we die, we’ll all get…

Gary Cutlack Science, Space, Vehicles