Wednesday, February 9, 2005

Space Entrepreneurs Create Industry Group

A group of entrepreneurs has formed to promote safety standards and help grow the personal spaceflight industry, on the heels of the first successful set of suborbital flights from the Mojave desert. The group includes Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites, developer of Spaceship One and winner of the $10 million dollar Ansari X PRIZE for sending a personal spaceship into orbit twice last year, and representatives from Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, the company formed by the music mogul to create the first commercial passenger spaceflight service. The Mojave Spaceport, SpaceX, XCOR, Armadillo Aerospace, X PRIZE Foundation, t/Space/HMX, Pioneer Rocketplane, and Space Adventures are represented in the group. The Perosnal Spaceflight Industry federation will set standards, and will be open to all US non-profit and commercial entities developing suborbital commercial passenger travel.

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