Texas space port

[dragon]

Sweet another pvrivate space port being built

HOUSTON, Texas (AP) -- A remote West Texas spaceport being built and bankrolled by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos launched a test rocket Monday for the first time.

"There was a launch, a one- or two-minute event," Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Roland Herwig said from the agency's office in Oklahoma City. He had no details.

The exact nature of the 6:30 a.m. launch or the type of spacecraft was not immediately known.

A Houston-based spokesman for Blue Origin, the Bezos-owned firm developing the private commercial space venture, did not immediately respond to a telephone inquiry from The Associated Press.

Blue Origin, based in the Seattle suburb of Kent, Washington, received FAA approval late this summer to begin its testing program. The secretive company has said it wants to use spacecraft that launch and land vertically.

The company obtained a temporary flight restriction from the FAA that began Friday and expired Monday. The restriction barred other aircraft from a 5-mile radius of the spaceport and up to 10,000 feet in altitude for a five-hour period each day.

According to documents Blue Origin submitted to the FAA earlier this year, its New Shepard Resuable Launch Vehicle would be cone-shaped, about 50 feet tall and 22 feet in diameter at the base. It would consist of two stacked modules, one to provide propulsion, the other a crew capsule "capable of carrying three or more space flight participants," according to the report to the agency.

Blue Origin said there could be as many as 10 suborbital tests this year. As many as 52 commercial flights, the goal of the project, could begin in 2010.

CNN

[dragon]

Damn wrong forum, how the hell did I do that I just post in the news forum oh well could a mod please move?

[NecronLord]

Very well.

[Sikon]

Such suborbital tourism has much potential. The commercial LEO satellite launch market suffered when a handful of major satellite constellations planned in the 1990s never materialized. However, once tourism happens frequently, it can be a more stable source of revenue. Customers may pay hundreds of thousands of dollars initially for a short suborbital flight, but, once the flight rate increases, prices will drop, helped by competition.

Even automobiles once were only affordable to the rich.

Surveys have indicated that up to tens of percent of the entire population would be willing to pay thousands of dollars to experience space, so the long-term revenue potential is many, many billions of dollars. Inexpensive reusable suborbital launch vehicles are much easier than reusable orbital LVs, but technology for the former can lead to the latter, making suborbital space tourism indirectly the best hope for a future with space settlements and more space exploration.

[Zor]

Well this is cool, Go Spaceport builders!

Zor