Post by sherlew99 on Dec 8, 2013 9:26:34 GMT -6
Men's Journal
The sky's no limit: Five top commercial space travel companies
By Kevin Gray
December 4, 2013
Once a week at dawn, C.J. Sturckow guns a blue Extra 330SC stunt plane into the pink sky above the Mojave Desert. At 14,000 feet, the 5-foot-9 former NASA astronaut starts doing his "card" – a checklist of rolls and spins meant to simulate spaceflight's G-forces. White-knuckling the plane's joystick, he exerts nearly six G's on his body, enough to drain the blood from his brain until he nearly "grays out." "When I first started doing it," he says in a Texas accent, "it was a little nauseating."
Getting used to the G's is part of the top-secret training Sturckow, 52, is undergoing at Virgin Galactic's remote facility in Mojave, Calif. For years, Virgin's billionaire founder, Sir Richard Branson, has been bankrolling a 255-person crew of the world's top pilots, engineers, physicists and designers to produce the first commercial space line – and he isn't alone. At least nine global companies are working to offer private spaceflight, and they are attracting a growing number of NASA astronauts and technicians now that the U.S. shuttle program has closed.
Forty-five years after Stanley Kubrick's “2001: A Space Odyssey,” the future of space travel is finally edging closer to reality. Here are five companies working on engineering future cosmic flights.
The sky's no limit: Five top commercial space travel companies
By Kevin Gray
December 4, 2013
Once a week at dawn, C.J. Sturckow guns a blue Extra 330SC stunt plane into the pink sky above the Mojave Desert. At 14,000 feet, the 5-foot-9 former NASA astronaut starts doing his "card" – a checklist of rolls and spins meant to simulate spaceflight's G-forces. White-knuckling the plane's joystick, he exerts nearly six G's on his body, enough to drain the blood from his brain until he nearly "grays out." "When I first started doing it," he says in a Texas accent, "it was a little nauseating."
Getting used to the G's is part of the top-secret training Sturckow, 52, is undergoing at Virgin Galactic's remote facility in Mojave, Calif. For years, Virgin's billionaire founder, Sir Richard Branson, has been bankrolling a 255-person crew of the world's top pilots, engineers, physicists and designers to produce the first commercial space line – and he isn't alone. At least nine global companies are working to offer private spaceflight, and they are attracting a growing number of NASA astronauts and technicians now that the U.S. shuttle program has closed.
Forty-five years after Stanley Kubrick's “2001: A Space Odyssey,” the future of space travel is finally edging closer to reality. Here are five companies working on engineering future cosmic flights.
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The launch of Space X's first commercial satellite on December 3rd 2013.
