DailyDirt: Going Up Into Space Soon

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Traveling to the edge of space isn’t easy. Sure, we can send up small things like a digital camera with a few helium-filled weather balloons, but a whole person is quite a bit more difficult (especially if the person wants to return to Earth safely). Fortunately, there are a few companies that are working on space tourism, and space tourists could help fund the development of a growing number of commercial space services. Here are just a few links related to putting people in space.

• Virgin Galactic is gearing up for its space tourism service, planning to launch routine flights to the edge of space in 2014. Sir Richard Branson once turned down an offer from Mikhail Gorbachev to fly into space for $50 million, but now Branson has made a similar offer to anyone with $200,000 to spare. [url]
• How much do we value an astronaut’s life? Life insurance for an Apollo 11 astronaut comes in the form of an autographed postcard, worth about $30,000. [url]
• China is planning to send three people to its orbiting space station in a few months. So far, only the US and Russia have independently sent people to orbiting space stations. China would become just the third country to do so. [url]

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: astronauts, china, space, space station, space tourism
Companies: virgin galactic