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RICHARD BRANSON’S VIRGIN Galactic Company is reeling from the loss of SpaceShipTwo, which crashed in California’s Mojave desert on Friday, killing one of its pilots and seriously injuring the other.
Branson, a billionaire business mogul whose Virgin group of companies have ranged from music to airlines to mobile phones, founded Virgin Galactic ten years ago with the aim of offering flights to the edge of space for anyone who could pay the $250,000 price tag.
The future of Virgin’s commercial suborbital flight programme is unclear in the wake of the tragic accident. Branson has said the company will not “push on blindly” until the cause of the accident has been determined.
The 64-year-old Branson is not the only businessman in the space trade.
Historically, space and aviation have been a point of fascination by moguls who have made their fortune and want to accomplish something bigger.
Eccentric millionaire Howard Hughes, who made his name in the film business in the 1920s and 1930s, fixated on aerospace and aviation and built innovative airplanes and set air-speed flying records. And James Lick, a real estate tycoon, spent a fortune building a state-of-the-art telescope and observatory in 1876 in San Jose, California.
Today, the concept of space travel has proved an irresistible allure for many entrepreneurs who have already made it in the tech world, and they have been spurred on by NASA’s increasing reliance on private companies to conduct space missions.
The industry has been rocked by SpaceShipTwo’s crash coming just days after the explosion of an Orbital Sciences Corp. commercial supply rocket bound for the International Space Station. But the race for commercial space travel continues.
Here’s a look at the major tech titans leading the way…
ELON MUSK
The 43-year-old co-founder of PayPal and head of Tesla Motors launched Space Exploration Technologies Corp. in 2002 with the ultimate goal of developing the technology to allow humans to live on other planets.
SpaceX, as it is known, designs, makes and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft. In 2012, NASA hired SpaceX to deliver cargo and eventually astronauts to the International Space Station.
The company’s spacecraft have since made five trips to the International Space Station and back, including four official resupply missions.
The Hawthorne, California company has over 3,000 employees and operates three spacecraft: Dragon, Falcon Heavy and Falcon 8. Its Dragon spacecraft is expected to begin manned missions in the next two to three years.
JEFF BEZOS
The 50-year-old co-founder of Amazon.com Inc. started Blue Origin in Kent, Washington, in 2000 to develop technology to make human access to space easier.
It is currently focused on developing rocket-powered vertical takeoff and landing vehicles for access to the edge of space and beyond.
As of 2012 Blue Origin had received $22 million from NASA. Its crew and cargo vehicle, called New Shepard, is designed to eventually take tourists to suborbit.
Last month, United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Lockheed Martin Corp. and Boeing Co. that launches unmanned rockets, picked Blue Origin to develop a rocket engine that could eventually replace the Russian rocket engine used in many American unmanned launches.
PAUL ALLEN
The Microsoft Corp. co-founder teamed with aerospace pioneer Burt Rutan in 2004 on the experimental SpaceShipOne, which was launched from a special aircraft.
It became the first privately financed, manned spacecraft to dash into space and later won the $10 million Ansari X Prize for accomplishing the feat twice in two weeks. More recently, the 61-year-old’s Stratolaunch Systems, based in Hunstville, Alabama, is developing the world’s biggest plane to help launch cargo and astronauts into space.
Called Thunderbolt, it is tentatively scheduled to launch in 2018. Stratolaunch is working with Orbital Sciences and Rutan’s Scaled Composites. SpaceShipTwo was piloted by Scaled Composites, under contract with Virgin Galactic, during last week’s fatal crash.
JEFF GREASON
The rocket scientist and former Intel Corp. employee founded XCOR Aerospace in 1989. XCOR also is pursuing space tourism and hopes to conduct flight tests for its Lynx spaceship beginning in 2015.
In September, XCOR was partner to the Federal Aviation Administration approving a commercial space launch license for Midland International Airport in Texas, where XCOR operates a research and development center.
The 50-employee company is based at Mojave Air and Spaceport in Southern California and has built 13 different rocket engines and built and flown two manned rocket-powered aircraft — the EZ-Rocket and the X-Racer. Greason has served on the U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee.
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I refused to give up my seat yesterday and got nothing but daggers from everyone else… Its not my fault she got pregnant!
I think its important to remember Claudette Colvin, who history has forgotten in relation to this story. Read her story.
Thanks for the info. Didn’t know that.
Meanderings, I didn’t know that piece of information. Cheers.
Meanderings , I also never knew that , fair play .
@Meanderings, thanks for your mention of Claudette. It appears her age, her colour(pigmentocracy) and her circumstance went against her. Its a sad indictment that she was never truly recognised as the first to stand up to the bus segregation in Al . Even today most of her work colleagues in NY dont know her story.
Totally right. The whole boycott is a tremendous story, and although Parks was pivotal, it was kind of a planned pivot. Colvin didn’t fit the bill they needed to really make headlines, make a stand and propel the cause forward, a sad reality. Parks was well known and respected in the community and they knew people would get behind her and that her story would make a real impact. I always tell people to read up on the Montgomery bus boycott whenever they mention Parks, to get them to see the whole picture. And there are so many other nuances to the civil rights movement that most folks aren’t aware of – some of which makes current tensions in certain US states a bit clearer. Fascinating stuff.
You have opened my eyes to something I never knew! I’m actually amazed at how they engineered it that Parks was the heroine because she fit the profile better.
If it was today she probably would’ve been shot
Doubt it but she would be all over Buzzfeed.
Such dignity & class. Wonder if our water warriors could learn a trick or two.
How about the pink ladies who stood in a line outside the garda station in coolock to highlight the abuse of woman by guards, pretty peaceful by any standards and the guards were peeping out the Windows like cowards at them, great community relations altogether.
Brave lady who helped change history and sounded quite stoical about to boot!
In America the percentage of African Americans unemployed is much higher than amongst the White community. Black politicians are rare and ones occupying positions of power even rarer(Obama being the exception). The booming IT market is run by predominantly white men and Silicon Valley has recently being charged with institutionalised racism. Every major American city has large communities of African Americans living in extreme poverty and let’s not forget that the police think that being black is reason enough to shoot on sight. So let’s ask the question; what has really changed for African Americans since Rosa Parks made her stand?
Hard to believe that the same country, the USA, was trying to transplant its so called version of democracy around the globe and yet did not afford its coloured citizens the same privileges. Makes you wonder!
The sad thing is that I could easily imagine our own guards doing exactly the same thing, “just following the law” I reckon a requirement of being a guard us that you have to be clueless.
I think ‘just following orders ‘is the mantra. The nazis said the same thing.
In fairness the cop was thinking that if he didn’t arrest her he was fit to be lynched himself.
Thankfully keelan some people don’t care about the consequences. Look up a guy called Wilhelm canaris, a nazi general who thwarted Hitler whenever he could.
Keelan that’s exactly my point, the govt hire people with no moral compass, why do you think Ireland’s always been such an insular society.
So cupid you would only inforce laws you agreed with??
Sometimes mark you have to do the right thing. You should never just accept what you’re told blindly!
Again are you saying you would only inforce laws you wanted too? Cupids comment was about ireland, what laws would he not inforce in Ireland?
The nazis weren’t racist. Hitler had black and chinese men in his armies. At the olympics in 1936 hitler was respectful of the black athletes when the yanks weren’t.
While the US wanted us to believe it was an open and fair society as opposed to the communists is Russia in the 50′s, it was a racist and apartheid one until President JFK. Guess what, Kennedy was assassinated and the racism there still continues. Here in racist Ireland we are no better with our No Blacks, no Dogs and now no Muslims ..anyone here with an open mind want to discuss this issue?
Sure the feckers went and shot black Friday last week
lol, I don’t think you can just say blacks. Maybe the black population of…
It
You make a compelling argument Deborah
Harsh but fair.
It’s gas, when I first heard of her it was 40 years ago. Soon it will be 100.
have your say