Reuters features an interview with Wil Whitehorn in which he gives a strongly positive assessment of the space tourism business. There have been many expressions of interest from financial institutions and corporations in investment in Virgin Galactic. "We perceive the possibility we will be able to bring an investor in," Whitehorn said. "I think there will be a wall of money that goes into private space."

Looking at the longer term, Whitehorn was bullish about the potential for suborbital point-to-point travel, and scientific and satellite launch applications. "We could put all of our server farms in space quite easily.", he said.

Rocketeer comments: He must be using a different definition of "quite easily" from the one I'm used to. Consider that a reasonable standard unit for large-scale commodity computing is the "Googlebox" portable data centre unit that fits in a standard ISO shipping container. The Googlebox contains up to 1,160 servers, and draws 250kW of power, which is twice as much as the entire ISS generating capacity. That's one box. The Google container farm "Data Center A" discussed in the linked article has 45 containers drawing 10 megawatts. Assuming that each compute unit and associated power and thermal control system massed 25 tonnes, it would need nearly 50 heavy-lift launches to loft one Google data centre to LEO. Ummm... yeah. Easy.

(Source: Leicester University Physics & Astronomy Department)

It is with great regret that I have to inform you of the untimely death of Martin Turner. Martin passed away last night following a protracted illness.

Through his career Martin was a hugely influential figure in the field of X-ray astronomy. In 2004, he was honoured with a CBE for services to X-ray astronomy. Paying tribute to his colleague, George Fraser, commented at the time that 'The award of a CBE to Martin Turner is very well-deserved recognition of a tremendous contribution to the field of X-ray Astronomy in a career of over thirty years here at Leicester. Martin has, perhaps uniquely, led the development of three major instruments in the field launched respectively on EXOSAT (1983), Ginga (1987) and XMM-Newton (1999). The last of these, the XMM-Newton EPIC camera -for which he is the ESA Principal Investigator - continues to perform flawlessly in orbit'.

Martin maintained his commitment to X-ray astronomy right up to his recent retirement including being a Co-Principal Investigator on a proposal for a next-generation X-ray space observatory (XEUS) submitted to ESA in 2007. He also had a very strong interest in space exploration - for example his Inaugural Lecture in 2005 was entitled "The Journey to Mars".

Martin will be sadly missed by his many friends at Leicester, elsewhere in the UK and worldwide.

In an interview with Gizmodo, Wil Whitehorn says that he expects that the cost of a Virgin Galactic suborbital flight will come down to around $100,000 after three to five years of operation, but is not expected to fall to the $10,000 level. "Gravity doesn't give you a discount", he said.

I agree with Clark Lindsey's comments that the potential for operational cost reductions in a "gas-and-go" liquid-fuelled rocket vehicle like the XCOR Lynx/Lynx-II is much better than in a hybrid rocket like SpaceShipTwo, where the case-throat-nozzle assembly has to be reinstalled after each flight.

Oh hello, what's this?

May be worth keeping an eye on.

I must say, I kind of like the logo design, especially the typeface. Reminiscent of classic shows like Gerry Anderson's "UFO". When the UK establishes a Moonbase, it should be crewed by purple-haired chicks in silver miniskirts, dammit ;-)

Rob Coppinger has been swirling the ESA tea leaves, and concludes that the upcoming ESA/NASA bilateral meeting in Plymouth in June portends good things for UK manned spaceflight, most likely a British addition to the ESA reserve astronaut list.

• UK to get reserve astronaut in ESA corps this June? -- Hyperbola

The Sci-Fi London film festival staged a panel discussion on space colonisation on May 4th. Topics covered included the uniqueness of our planet and whether manned exploration of space is inevitable for the survival of the human race.

Speakers included:

David Ashford, Director of Bristol Spaceplanes. Co-author of the first serious book on space tourism 'Your Spaceflight Manual - How You Could be a Tourist in Space Within Twenty Years', by David Ashford and Patrick Collins.

Marek Kukula, Public Astronomer at Greenwich Observatory, specialising in the study of supermassive black holes and the evolution of galaxies. He has 15 years of research including two years at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, home of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.

David Kipping, Astronomer based at University College London investigating extra-solar planets, the development of novel detection techniques and astrobiology.

Jerry Stone, has given lectures on space for almost 40 years. He is a Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society and the Royal Astronomical Society, Chairman of the Space Education Council and a Director of the Mars Society UK.

Rocketeer comments: Ack, I wish I'd known about this in advance. I'd have loved to have been on the panel, especially since I know three of the four speakers already! ;-)

(Source: Jeff Foust)

The video below is B-roll footage released by Virgin Galactic media relations on March 29 of a White Knight 2 test flight.

WhiteKnightTwo flight highlights from Jeff Foust on Vimeo.

The latest WK2 test flight on April 20th experienced an anomaly on a touch-and-go takeoff -- during the initial pullup the right tailboom apparently struck the runway. There was no obvious damage to the aircraft and the test flight programme continued. Flight International later claimed that the aircraft appeared to have steering problems after landing, which it ascribed to the vertical stabilising fins being too small for the size of the aircraft.

Scaled Composites released a press statement describing the tailstrike incident, and explained the yaw after landing as due to an "asymmetric idle thrust setting" and not caused by crosswinds, or any issue with the vertical stabilisers.“Only procedural changes are required to ensure we do not experience it again,” the company stated. Scaled went on to criticise the media speculation which appeared, calling it "sufficiently inaccurate and negative" that the press statement was merited. “In the mean time, do be cautious of what you read if it does not come from either our flight test team or our customer. Also, to state the obvious, you should question the motivations of a publication that reports design or flight test information that is based only on speculation.”, the statement concluded.

Update:

• Flight International responds to the Scaled press release
• WK2 and the media -- Mojave Skies
• Image of the tailstrike incident -- Flight International
• Scaled plans WK2 flight to 50000ft by September -- Flight International

(Source: Space.co.uk)

The story of Black Arrow, Britain's satellite launcher. Produced and directed by Joe Myerscough and Matthew Stacy.

Update: The video is also on Youtube:-

Part 1:-

Part 2:-

Part 3:-