Europe Unveils Space Plane for Tourist Market

Along with Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, XCOR, and Rocketplane, Euro aerospace giant EADS’ Astrium division is planning on entering the sub-orbital space tourism market, for a planned cost of approx. $225K per 90 min. flight. They have a kind of neat video showing their concept, essentially a corporate-jet looking craft that will use jet runway take-off and landing, with a rocket boost into the edge of spaceflight.

Bert Rutan, designer of Spaceship One which won the Ansari X-Prize for successful repeated suborbital spaceflights, is now designing and building Branson’s Spaceship Two series for Virgin Galactic. He is less than impressed with the concept, noting extra weight, and costs associated with hauling jet engines and fuel into space, but hey, the Chief says the more the merrier in this game.

Besides, there’s more than one way to solve a technological problem, especially at this early stage of private spaceflight, and what direction the technology takes at this time is virtually wide open spaces!