A production facility that would build the world’s first fleet of commercial spaceships is set to begin construction Tuesday at the Mojave Air and Space Port.…
Virgin Galactic, which says it has taken reservations and deposits from more than 380 people, hopes to make its first passenger flight next year from the yet-to-be finished Spaceport America in New Mexico.
The craft is to climb to the edge of space, about 60 miles above the Earth’s surface.
At that suborbital altitude, passengers experience weightlessness and see the curvature of the Earth. The price for the experience: $200,000. The carrier plane, which resembles a flying catamaran because it has two fuselages, and the six-passenger rocket ship are in the midst of a test-flight program in Mojave.
Well it’s about freaking time if you ask me. Space! Sign me up for space tourism — once the price comes down and they’ve worked out all the kinks, of course. Unless someone has $200,000 lying around, in which case I’m willing to forgo the waiting-on-the-kinks thing.
Seems appropriate that the news should come down on what would have been Carl Sagan’s 76th birthday.
The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. On this shore, we’ve learned most of what we know. Recently, we’ve waded a little way out, maybe ankle-deep, and the water seems inviting. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return, and we can, because the cosmos is also within us. We’re made of star stuff.
Look at this thing:
The Mets would be wise to sign a middle infielder of some sort this offseason. We know this. None of the various in-house options at second base — Ruben Tejada, Daniel Murphy, Justin Turner, Reese Havens, and, lest we forget, Luis Castillo — is yet appealing enough to merit a place in the Opening Day lineup.
Tedquarters 