Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Mission Virgin Galactic

I'm one of those people that thinks (let's be honest: wildly guesses) that suborbital space tourism isn't enough, and the suborbital rocket companies need to aggressively pursue other businesses like science experiments, remote sensing for commercial and government customers, smallsat launch, White Knight Two-type tourism flights (in the case of Virgin Galactic) for those who can't afford suborbital but still are really into it and want the next best thing, and more. RLV News lets us know about a Virgin Galactic contest called Mission Virgin Galactic for UK students that sounds like it might bring forth some ideas along those lines:

They will work in teams of four to design a marketable product that demonstrates one or more of the science, technology or engineering principles used in the Virgin Galactic programme.