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September 30, 2004
"Rocket Concert" in Mojave
From Rich Godwin, NSS Board member:
A quick invitation to all NSS members.
Apogee Books will be hosting a “Rocket Concert” in the public viewing area at Mojave Airport from early Sunday evening. It will go on all night probably, we will be showing some pretty cool movies, some of which you might not have seen before. Of course we will also be showcasing our latest Space Tourism book by John Spencer. http://www.cgpublishing.com/tourism.htm.
You won’t be able to miss us; we’ll have a tent for the book display with a large Winnebago behind that will be covered in posters and banners wishing Spaceship1 the best of fortune.
All NSS members are welcome
Rich Godwin
Posted by apsmith at 12:25 PM | Comments (0)
September 27, 2004
Virgin Galactic - space tourism starting 2007
From Bruce Mackenzie, referencing the following articles:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/3693020.stm
http://space.com/missionlaunches/virgin_space_040927.html
Virgin [Airlines] boss Sir Richard Branson has signed a £14m agreement which will see his company take passengers into space. The British entrepreneur is having five "spaceliners" built in the US by the team behind the SpaceShipOne vehicle.
The California-based rocket plane became the first privately developed carrier to go above 100km in June.
Sir Richard says it will cost around £100,000 to go on a "Virgin Galactic" spaceliner, and the first flights should begin in about three years' time.
Posted by apsmith at 04:41 PM | Comments (0)
September 24, 2004
Senate restores NASA funding
The US Senate Appropriations Committee just this week approved their version of the 2005 VA-HUD appropriations bill, which includes NASA among the independent agencies covered. The base appropriation of $16.379 billion was considerably less than the administration request, but an addition $800 million in "emergency" money was tacked on, to cover shuttle return to flight and Hubble telescope repair, and possibly repairs from hurricane damage. space.com was among the news agencies with reports about the Senate bill.
It does include more funding for the new exploration vision than the House version, but the extra money for shuttle and Hubble mean it is still less than was originally requested. Time to call your senators and either thank them for their support of this bill, or recommend they vote for it when it comes to the floor.
Posted by apsmith at 01:51 PM | Comments (0)
September 14, 2004
See George Whitesides in Zero-G!
MSNBC this afternoon has an article (currently linked from an image on the front page!) about Peter Diamandis' new Zero-Gravity Corporation. They are offering a slightly tamer version of NASA's "Vomet Comet" flights, for just under $3000 a person. The scheduled flight paths include segments at 1/3 g (Mars), 1/6 g (Moon) and 0 g in the 90-minute flight.
Take a close look at this image and you'll see the person in front flying in open-mouthed amazement is NSS's Executive Director George Whitsides, enjoying a ride on one of the company's test flights!
Posted by apsmith at 02:01 PM | Comments (2)
September 07, 2004
Space.com Top 100 space leaders
Space.com's Top 100 space leaders list is available on the web now. Our very own George Whitesides is on the list of "people to watch":
George Whitesides -- Whitesides emerged on the scene at the founding convention of the Mars Society in 1998 delivering a stirring address calling on Generation X to unite behind human exploration of the red planet. Since then, the 30-year-old Whitesides has earned a remote sensing degree from Cambridge University, started a charity that gives telescopes to children around the world, organized an annual worldwide celebration of Yuri Gagarin’s historic spaceflight, and worked as vice president of marketing for the parabolic flight start-up Zero Gravity Corp. Whitesides took the reins of the National Space Society in 2004.
Gerard O'Neill didn't make their top ten, but they have a very nice summary on the space visionaries page:
Gerard K. O’Neill -- Dozens of readers nominated O’Neill for this list, a real testament to the impact he had on so many people. No other person who lived and worked in the last 15 years was mentioned nearly as often. Although he died in the early Spring of 1992, O’Neill’s book, “The High Frontier,” continues to inspire new generations of space enthusiasts. His testimony to the U.S. Congress about such issues as solar power from space and living in artificial space habitats fueled the grass roots activists and inspired a new generation of innovators who are working to make space a reality beyond government programs. O’Neill’s descendents are determined to prove that his vision of private groups getting things done in space in a way that is truly faster, better and cheaper than the things the big bureaucracies do. Even within NASA’s large structure, O’Neill’s followers are self-organizing into work groups for specific missions that were unthinkable 15 years ago. Unthinkable, that is, for those who hadn’t spent a few minutes with O’Neill.
Posted by apsmith at 09:11 AM | Comments (0)
September 05, 2004
New Membership Brochures
Marianne Dyson has put together a beautiful new membership brochure for us to use - it can be downloaded and printed from the website:
http://www.nss.org/membership/flyers/NSSbrochureBW_Sep_2004.pdf (Black and White)
http://www.nss.org/membership/flyers/NSSbrochureColor_Sep_2004.pdf (Color)
These are corrected brochures (previous version was dated August) - it was decided to apply the introductory membership rate from the website to the print brochures as well, for now. As with the old NSS brochures, they're two-sided and tri-fold.
Posted by apsmith at 12:37 PM | Comments (0)