Ken Baxter | |
|---|---|
 Ken Baxter at his PMA Realty office in Las Vegas, NV | |
| Born | May 15, 1949 |
Ken "Rocket Man" Baxter (born May 15, 1949) is a real estate investor who became the first everyday American to travel to space on September 8, 2023. Baxter purchased the first ticket sold to a civilian to be a passenger on Virgin Galactic in 2004. [1]
Baxter was born in Cortland, New York on May 15, 1949. The son of Hoyt H. Baxter and Maria "Zuza" (Alzbeta) Kramerova Baxter, he and his family relocated to Orem, Utah in 1954. He graduated from Orem High School in 1967. Baxter is the eldest of five siblings. He has two sisters, Radana (Clark) and Julie (Dansie), along with two brothers, Mike and David. [2]
In a career spanning over four decades, Baxter has closed over 56,000 real estate transactions. [3] He began his career in Idaho Falls, Idaho at the age of twenty-one in 1970, owning and operating a boutique-style operation selling automobile and home stereos. By 1973, Baxter translated his sales aptitude to the Real Estate business by hiring, motivating, and training a staff of nearly 100 new home specialists at Heartland Realty in Salt Lake City. [4] In the 1980s, Baxter liquidated all of the REO high rise inventory in Salt Lake City. [5] Relocating to Las Vegas in 1990, Baxter continued his real estate career by opening his first real estate brokerage firm in Nevada. Today Baxter carries on the tradition of "Rebuilding Las Vegas, One Family at a Time" [6] through his Las Vegas real estate office, PMA Realty and his real estate investment and residential redevelopment company, Apollo Realty Investments. [7] Baxter has also ventured into the new homes market via his new home building company, Liberty Homes. Baxter has provided single story, semi-custom homes in Northwest Las Vegas since 2012. [8]
Baxter publicly credits his fascination with the space program to reading From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne as a young boy. [9] Baxter holds the distinction of First Founder [10] [11] of Virgin Galactic, a space tourism company announced by Sir Richard Branson on September 25, 2004.
Baxter purchased the first commercial space flight ticket at $200,000 USD [1] after viewing a 60 Minutes segment featuring Burt Rutan, winner of the $10,000,000 X Prize for the first non-governmental organization to launch a reusable crewed spacecraft into space twice within two weeks, and thereafter, earning him the nickname "Rocket Man". [12]
Baxter’s dream of space travel was finally realized on September 8, 2023 at 8:30 am MDT, when he became Virgin Galactic Astronaut 014, and Astronaut 666 overall, the first, everyday American to experience the thrill of zero gravity, 90 kilometers above the surface of the earth. [13] [14] In a recent interview, Baxter expressed his wonder and appreciation for the privilege of joining the elite collection of human beings, beginning with Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin in 1961, to be forever known as astronauts.
Rutan is also the designer of Sir Richard Branson's SpaceShipTwo, which attached to the mother ship, will be carried to about 16 kilometers or 52,000 feet by a carrier aircraft, White Knight Two. At that point, when the carrier aircraft reaches its maximum height, the SpaceShipTwo vehicle will separate and continue to over 100 km (the Kármán line, a common definition of where "space" begins). Despite the crash of the first iteration of SpaceShipTwo during a test flight on October 31, 2014, [15] Baxter remained optimistic about his upcoming flight, holding his place at the top of the passenger list to ultimately become the world's first commercial space tourist. [16]
Baxter has contributed his time and resources to several charitable endeavors. Through his public charity, Green Global, Baxter acts as an advocate for protecting our planet's precious resources including preserving our rainforests and oceans, exposing carbon fraud schemes, and promoting conservation. Ken is passionate about saving the Amazon Rainforest from the ill effects of deforestation on the region. [17] Another of Baxter's public charities, Made In America, prides itself for being the driving force of the New Industrial Revolution in America and is dedicated to supporting and strengthening the return and retention of American jobs in the manufacturing sector in an effort to reignite the economic recovery of the US. [18] [19] Made In America has also donated technology equipment to needy schools in and around the Las Vegas Valley. [20] Parent organization, the Ken and Linda Baxter Family Foundation, was established in 2005 and provides philanthropic grants for education, research and the environment.
Space tourism is human space travel for recreational purposes. There are several different types of space tourism, including orbital, suborbital and lunar space tourism. Tourists are motivated by the possibility of viewing Earth from space, feeling weightlessness, experiencing extremely high speed and something unusual, and contributing to science.
Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc. is a British-American spaceflight company founded by Richard Branson and the Virgin Group conglomerate which retains an 11.9% stake through Virgin Investments Limited. It is headquartered in California, and operates from New Mexico. The company develops commercial spacecraft and provides suborbital spaceflights to space tourists. Virgin Galactic's suborbital spacecraft are air launched from beneath a carrier airplane known as White Knight Two. Virgin Galactic's maiden spaceflight occurred in 2018 with its VSS Unity spaceship. Branson had originally hoped to see a maiden spaceflight by 2010, but the date was delayed, primarily due to the October 2014 crash of VSS Enterprise.
VSS Enterprise was the first SpaceShipTwo (SS2) spaceplane, built by Scaled Composites for Virgin Galactic. As of 2004, it was planned to be the first of five commercial suborbital SS2 spacecraft planned by Virgin Galactic.
The Scaled Composites Model 339 SpaceShipTwo (SS2) was an air-launched suborbital spaceplane type designed for space tourism. It was manufactured by The Spaceship Company, a California-based company owned by Virgin Galactic.
The Scaled Composites Model 348 White Knight Two (WK2) is a quadjet cargo aircraft that was used to lift the SpaceShipTwo (SS2) spacecraft to release altitude. It was developed by Scaled Composites from 2007 to 2010 as the first stage of Tier 1b, a two-stage to suborbital-space crewed launch system. WK2 is based on the successful mothership to SpaceShipOne, White Knight, which itself was based on Proteus.
The Spaceship Company (TSC) is a British/American spacecraft manufacturing company that was founded by Burt Rutan and Richard Branson in mid-2005 and was jointly owned by Virgin Group (70%) and Scaled Composites (30%) until 2012 when Virgin Galactic became the sole owner. TSC was formed to own the technology created by Scaled for Virgin Galactic's Virgin SpaceShip program. This includes developments on the care-free reentry system and cantilevered-hybrid rocket motor, licensed from Paul Allen and Burt Rutan's Mojave Aerospace. The company is manufacturing Virgin Galactic's spacecraft and has plans to sell spacecraft to other buyers.
SpaceShip III was an upcoming class of spaceplanes by Virgin Galactic to follow SpaceShipTwo. It was first teased on the Virgin Galactic Twitter account on 25 February 2021 announcing the rollout of the first SpaceShip III plane on 30 March 2021.
Edward P. Roski Jr. is an American businessman and philanthropist. He is a billionaire, president of Majestic Realty, and appeared at #115 on the Forbes 400 in 2021, and owns more than 83 million square feet of real estate across the United States, as a business park developer through his company. Roski has served as its president since 1994, and previously as the executive vice-president and chief operating officer, from 1978 to 1994. He is a partial owner of the Los Angeles Kings, and the Los Angeles Lakers, and owns the Silverton Las Vegas. He is also a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War and art collector.
A commercial astronaut is a person who has commanded, piloted, or served as an active crew member of a privately-funded spacecraft. This is distinct from an otherwise non-government astronaut, for example Charlie Walker, who flies while representing a non-government corporation but with funding or training or both coming from government sources.
The Airbus Defence and Space Spaceplane, also called EADS Astrium TBN according to some sources, is a suborbital spaceplane concept for carrying space tourists, proposed by EADS Astrium, the space subsidiary of the European consortium EADS. A full-size mockup was officially unveiled in Paris, France, on June 13, 2007, and is now on display in the Concorde hall of the Musée de l'Air et de l'Espace. The project is the first space tourism entry by a major aerospace contractor.
Per Wimmer is a Danish space advocate, entrepreneur, financier and author.
Namira Salim is a Pakistani polar adventurer, astronaut and artist based in Monaco and Dubai. On the recommendation of the Pakistani government, she was in 2011 appointed as an honorary consul of Pakistan to Monaco, following her efforts to establish diplomatic relations between the two countries. She is the first Pakistani to have reached both the North Pole and the South Pole. Salim is the only Pakistani among the first 100 aspiring space tourists to purchase a ticket for Virgin Galactic's future commercial space liner. She became the first Pakistani astronaut, the first astronaut from Monaco, and the first female astronaut from the UAE to travel to space, traveling aboard Virgin Galactic on 6th October, 2023.
RocketShip Tours is an American space tourism company founded in 2008 by travel industry entrepreneur Jules Klar and which planned to provide sub-orbital human spaceflights to the paying public, in partnership with rocketplane developer XCOR Aerospace. Klar created RocketShip Tours to act as General Sales Agent for XCOR Aerospace.
VP-03 was a sub-orbital spaceflight of the SpaceShipTwo-class VSS Unity which took place on 13 December 2018, piloted by Mark P. Stucky and co-piloted by Frederick W. "CJ" Sturckow.
Mark P. "Forger" Stucky is an American test pilot and commercial astronaut. In these roles, he was an employee of Virgin Galactic, a private spaceflight company which is developing sub-orbital space tourism flights.
Sirisha Bandla is an Indian-American aeronautical engineer and commercial astronaut. She is the Vice President of Government Affairs and Research Operations for Virgin Galactic. She flew on the Virgin Galactic Unity 22 mission which made her the second India-born woman to go to space and the fourth person of Indian descent ever to go past the line of space after Rakesh Sharma, Kalpana Chawla and Sunita Williams.
Galactic 02 (G02) was a crewed sub-orbital spaceflight of the SpaceShipTwo-class VSS Unity, launched on 10 August 2023. It was the second commercial spaceflight and seventh overall spaceflight for American aerospace company Virgin Galactic. The mission was the first to carry space tourists, as the previous flight, Galactic 01, carried astronauts from the Italian Air Force and the Italian National Research Council.