Virgin Galactic Unity 22
Virgin Galactic Unity 22 was a sub-orbital spaceflight of the SpaceShipTwo-class VSS ''Unity'' which launched on 11 July 2021. The crew consisted of pilots David Mackay and Michael Masucci as well as passengers Sirisha Bandla, Colin Bennett, Beth Moses, and Richard Branson. Background On 7 June 2021, Jeff Bezos announced that he planned to be on the first crewed flight of his company Blue Origin, which meant being aboard the first crewed flight to space (suborbital) of a private enterprise fully funded by private money with (2 possible different "record firsts" depending on whether one uses the international standard limit of space as 100 km altitude or the USA 50 mile altitude limit): * A) in case of using the Karman line as the boundary of space, passengers (non-pilots) onboard, or * B) in case of using thee USAF/NASA 50 mile altitude limit for space, more than 1 passenger (i.e. non-pilot) aboard. These two different "record firsts" are due to the fact that A) SpaceShip ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Virgin Galactic
Virgin Galactic is an American spaceflight company founded by Richard Branson and his British Virgin Group retains an 11.9% stake through Virgin Investments Limited. It is headquartered in California, and operates from New Mexico. The company is developing commercial spacecraft and aims to provide suborbital spaceflights to space tourists. Virgin Galactic's suborbital spacecraft are air launched from beneath a carrier airplane known as White Knight Two. Virgin Galactic‘s maiden spaceflight occurred in 2018 with its VSS ''Unity'' spaceship. Branson had originally hoped to see a maiden spaceflight by 2010, but the date was delayed for several years, primarily due to the October 2014 crash of VSS ''Enterprise''. The company did the early work on the satellite launch development of LauncherOne before this was hived off to a separate company, Virgin Orbit, in 2017. The company also has aspirations for suborbital transport and in 2017, Branson has said that Virgin Galactic was ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Blue Origin
Blue Origin, LLC is an American private spaceflight, privately funded aerospace manufacturer and sub-orbital spaceflight services company headquartered in Kent, Washington. Founded in 2000 by Jeff Bezos, the founder and executive chairman of Amazon (company), Amazon, the company is led by CEO Bob Smith and aims to make access to space cheaper and more reliable through reusable launch vehicles. Rob Meyerson led Blue Origin from 2003 to 2017 and served as its first president. Blue Origin is employing an incremental approach from suborbital to orbital flight, with each developmental step building on its prior work. The company's name refers to the blue planet, Earth, as the point of origin. Blue Origin develops orbital technology, rocket-powered VTVL, vertical takeoff and vertical landing (VTVL) vehicles for access to sub-orbital spaceflight, suborbital and orbital spaceflight, orbital outer space, space. Initially focused on suborbital spaceflight, the company has designed, built ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Mother Ship
A mother ship, mothership or mother-ship is a large vehicle that leads, serves, or carries other smaller vehicles. A mother ship may be a maritime ship, aircraft, or spacecraft. Examples include bombers converted to carry experimental aircraft to altitudes where they can conduct their research (such as the B-52 carrying the X-15), or ships that carry small submarines to an area of ocean to be explored (such as the Atlantis II carrying the Alvin). A mother ship may also be used to recover smaller craft, or go its own way after releasing them. A smaller vessel serving or caring for ''larger'' craft is usually called a tender. Etymology In many Asian languages, such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Indonesian, the word ''mothership'' (, ja, 母艦, ko, 모함, id, Kapal induk, literally "mother" + "(war)ship") typically refers to an aircraft carrier, which is translated as "aircraft/aviation mothership" (, ja, 航空母艦, ko, 항공모함, ms, Kapal induk pesawa ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Astronaut Chris Hadfield Just Gave Richard Branson His Astronaut Wings
An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'star', and (), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member aboard a spacecraft. Although generally reserved for professional space travelers, the term is sometimes applied to anyone who travels into space, including scientists, politicians, journalists, and tourists. "Astronaut" technically applies to all human space travelers regardless of nationality. However, astronauts fielded by Russia or the Soviet Union are typically known instead as cosmonauts (from the Russian "kosmos" (космос), meaning "space", also borrowed from Greek). Comparatively recent developments in crewed spaceflight made by China have led to the rise of the term taikonaut (from the Mandarin "tàikōng" (), meaning "space"), although its use is somewhat informal and its origin is unclear. In China, the People's Liberation Army Astronaut Corps astronauts and their ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Business Insider
''Insider'', previously named ''Business Insider'' (''BI''), is an American financial and business news website founded in 2007. Since 2015, a majority stake in ''Business Insider''s parent company Insider Inc. has been owned by the German publishing house Axel Springer. It operates several international editions, including one in the United Kingdom. ''Insider'' publishes original reporting and aggregates material from other outlets. , it maintained a liberal policy on the use of anonymous sources. It has also published native advertising and granted sponsors editorial control of its content. The outlet has been nominated for several awards, but is criticized for using factually incorrect clickbait headlines to attract viewership. In 2015, Axel Springer SE acquired 88 percent of the stake in Insider Inc. for $343 million (€306 million), implying a total valuation of $442 million. In February 2021, the brand was renamed simply ''Insider''. History ''Busi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Elon Musk
Elon Reeve Musk ( ; born June 28, 1971) is a business magnate and investor. He is the founder, CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; owner and CEO of Twitter, Inc.; founder of The Boring Company; co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI; and president of the philanthropic Musk Foundation. With an estimated net worth of around $139 billion as of December 23, 2022, primarily from his ownership stakes in Tesla and SpaceX, Musk is the second-wealthiest person in the world according to both the ''Bloomberg Billionaires Index'' and ''Forbes'' real-time billionaires list. Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa and briefly attended at the University of Pretoria before moving to Canada at age 18, acquiring citizenship through his Canadian-born mother. Two years later, he matriculated at Queen's University and transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he received bachelor's degrees in economics and physics. He moved ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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SpaceX
Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) is an American spacecraft manufacturer, launcher, and a satellite communications corporation headquartered in Hawthorne, California. It was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk with the stated goal of reducing space transportation costs to enable the colonization of Mars. The company manufactures the Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and Starship launch vehicles, several rocket engines, Cargo Dragon and Crew Dragon spacecraft, and Starlink communications satellites. SpaceX is developing a satellite internet constellation named Starlink to provide commercial internet service. In January 2020, the Starlink constellation became the largest satellite constellation ever launched, and as of December 2022 comprises over 3,300 small satellites in orbit. The company is also developing Starship, a privately funded, fully reusable, super heavy-lift launch system for interplanetary and orbital spaceflight. It is intended to become SpaceX's primary orbi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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New York Post
The ''New York Post'' (''NY Post'') is a conservative daily tabloid newspaper published in New York City. The ''Post'' also operates NYPost.com, the celebrity gossip site PageSix.com, and the entertainment site Decider.com. It was established in 1801 by Federalist and Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, and became a respected broadsheet in the 19th century under the name ''New York Evening Post''. Its most famous 19th-century editor was William Cullen Bryant. In the mid-20th century, the paper was owned by Dorothy Schiff, a devoted liberal, who developed its tabloid format. In 1976, Rupert Murdoch bought the ''Post'' for US$30.5 million. Since 1993, the ''Post'' has been owned by Murdoch's News Corp. Its distribution ranked 4th in the US in 2019. History 19th century The ''Post'' was founded by Alexander Hamilton with about US$10,000 () from a group of investors in the autumn of 1801 as the ''New-York Evening Post'', a broadsheet. Hamilton's co-investors included other New ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Billionaire Space Race
The billionaire space race is the rivalry among entrepreneurs who have entered the space industry from other industries - particularly computing. This private industry space race of the 21st century involves sending rockets to the ionosphere (mesosphere and thermosphere), orbital launch rockets, and suborbital tourist spaceflights. Today, the billionaire space race is primarily between three billionaires and their respective firms: * Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin, which is seeking to establish an industrial base in space. * Richard Branson's Virgin Group (through Virgin Galactic and Virgin Orbit), which seeks to dominate space tourism, low-cost small orbital launch vehicles, and intercontinental sub-orbital spaceflight. * Elon Musk's SpaceX, which seeks to colonize Mars as well as provide satellite-based internet through its Starlink project. Prior to his death in 2018, Paul Allen was also a major player in the billionaire space race through the aerospace division of his firm Vulcan. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Outer Space
Outer space, commonly shortened to space, is the expanse that exists beyond Earth and its atmosphere and between celestial bodies. Outer space is not completely empty—it is a near-perfect vacuum containing a low density of particles, predominantly a plasma of hydrogen and helium, as well as electromagnetic radiation, magnetic fields, neutrinos, dust, and cosmic rays. The baseline temperature of outer space, as set by the background radiation from the Big Bang, is . The plasma between galaxies is thought to account for about half of the baryonic (ordinary) matter in the universe, having a number density of less than one hydrogen atom per cubic metre and a kinetic temperature of millions of kelvins. Local concentrations of matter have condensed into stars and galaxies. Studies indicate that 90% of the mass in most galaxies is in an unknown form, called dark matter, which interacts with other matter through gravitational but not electromagnetic forces. Observations s ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Fédération Aéronautique Internationale
The (; FAI; en, World Air Sports Federation) is the world governing body for air sports, and also stewards definitions regarding human spaceflight. It was founded on 14 October 1905, and is headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland. It maintains world records for aeronautical activities, including ballooning, aeromodeling, and unmanned aerial vehicles (drones), as well as flights into space. History The FAI was founded at a conference held in Paris 12–14 October 1905, which was organized following a resolution passed by the Olympic Congress held in Brussels on 10 June 1905 calling for the creation of an Association "to regulate the sport of flying, ... the various aviation meetings and advance the science and sport of Aeronautics." The conference was attended by representatives from 8 countries: Belgium (Aero Club Royal de Belgique, founded 1901), France (Aéro-Club de France, 1898), Germany ( Deutscher Aero Club e.V.), Great Britain (Royal Aero Club, 1901), Italy ( Aero C ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Associated Press
The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. newspapers and broadcasters. The AP has earned 56 Pulitzer Prizes, including 34 for photography, since the award was established in 1917. It is also known for publishing the widely used '' AP Stylebook''. By 2016, news collected by the AP was published and republished by more than 1,300 newspapers and broadcasters, English, Spanish, and Arabic. The AP operates 248 news bureaus in 99 countries. It also operates the AP Radio Network, which provides newscasts twice hourly for broadcast and satellite radio and television stations. Many newspapers and broadcasters outside the United States are AP subscribers, paying a fee to use AP material without being contributing members of the cooperative. As part of their cooperative agreement with the AP, most ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |