The space tourism industry, its millionaire would-be passengers impatiently tapping on their platinum credit cards, just got a little more crowded, with the announcements of a new rocket development company and of plans to build a $265 million spaceport in the United Arab Emirates.
Three telecommunications entrepreneurs from Texas have joined with Space Adventures Ltd., the company that sent the first paying passengers to the International Space Station, to develop passenger spacecraft for suborbital flights.
The vehicles would be designed by a Russian company, and the first ships could be ready before 2008, said one of the entrepreneurs, Hamid Ansari, who with his wife, Ansousheh, and brother, Amir, helped finance the Ansari X Prize competition — the one that resulted in the first private flight to the edge of space, in 2004.
And Space Adventures announced today that it would build the spaceport in the emirate of Ras al Khaimah with an initial $30 million investment from its government. Eric Anderson, president and chief executive of Space Adventures, said Singapore would soon announce spaceport plans of its own.
These and other recent developments increase the likelihood that within a few years, nonastronauts who can afford a six-figure ticket will have the chance at a few minutes of weightlessness and black sky...
Of course, to put spacefaring technology into the hands of the UAE also gives them and their Al Qaeda sympathizers and their North Korean and Iranian clients technology for intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Just sayin'.
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