Purdue University is a public land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded in 1869 after Lafayette businessman John Purdue donated land and money to establish a college of science, technology, and agriculture in his name. The first classes were held on September 16, 1874, with six instructors and 39 students.
Space tourism is human space travel for recreational purposes. There are several different types of space tourism, including orbital, suborbital and lunar space tourism. To date, orbital space tourism has been performed only by the Russian Space Agency. Work also continues towards developing suborbital space tourism vehicles. This is being done by aerospace companies like Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic. In addition, SpaceX announced in 2018 that they are planning on sending space tourists, including Yusaku Maezawa, on a free-return trajectory around the Moon on the Starship.
Virgin Galactic is an American British spaceflight company within the Virgin Group. It is developing commercial spacecraft and aims to provide suborbital spaceflights to space tourists and suborbital launches for space science missions. SpaceShipTwo, Virgin Galactic's suborbital spacecraft, is air launched from beneath a carrier airplane known as White Knight Two.
The Scaled Composites Model 339 SpaceShipTwo (SS2) is an air-launched suborbital spaceplane type designed for space tourism. It is manufactured by The Spaceship Company, a California-based company owned by Virgin Galactic.
Michael Douglas Griffin is an American physicist and aerospace engineer who served as the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering from 2018 to 2020. He previously served as Administrator of NASA, the U.S. space agency, from April 13, 2005, to January 20, 2009. As NASA Administrator Griffin oversaw such areas as the future of human spaceflight, the fate of the Hubble telescope and NASA's role in understanding climate change. In April 2009 Griffin, who has an academic background, was named eminent scholar and a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.
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 will sell spacecraft to other buyers. The suborbital launch system offered will include the SpaceShipTwo spacecraft and the White Knight Two carrier aircraft.
Henry Tzu-Yow Yang is a Chinese American engineer and educator currently serving as the fifth chancellor of the University of California, Santa Barbara, a post he has held since 1994.
Spaceport America—formerly the Southwest Regional Spaceport—is an FAA-licensed spaceport located on 18,000 acres of State Trust Land in the Jornada del Muerto desert basin in New Mexico, United States directly west of and adjacent to U.S. Army's White Sands Missile Range. It lies 89 miles (143 km) north of El Paso, 45 miles (72 km) north of Las Cruces, and 20 miles (32 km) southeast of Truth or Consequences.
William H. Gerstenmaier is an aerospace engineer and policymaker, who served as NASA's Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations between 2005 and July 10, 2019. While in that role, he was described as "arguably the most influential person when it comes to US spaceflight." Prior to being Associate Administrator, Gerstenmaier served as the International Space Station Office Program Manager, at Johnson Space Center, a position he began in June 2002. In February 2020 SpaceX announced that Gerstenmaier had joined the company as a consultant.
Steve Isakowitz is the President and CEO of The Aerospace Corporation assuming the position on October 1, 2016. The Aerospace Corporation is a leading architect for the nation’s national security and civil space programs with more than 4,000 employees and annual revenues of $1.1 billion. Isakowitz is a recognized leader across the government, private, space, and technology sectors, having served in prominent roles at Virgin Galactic, the U.S. Department of Energy, NASA, and the White House Office of Management and Budget. He is the co-author of the AIAA International Reference Guide to Space Launch Systems, which received the Summerfield Book Award in 2003.
The Purdue University School of Aeronautics and Astronautics is Purdue University's school of aerospace engineering contained within the Purdue University College of Engineering. The school offers BS, M.S., and PhD degrees in aeronautical and astronautical engineering and provides distance graduate education including online MS in Engineering with concentration in Aeronautics and Astronautics and a distance PhD. Its main office and some of its labs are located in the Neil Armstrong Hall of Engineering. As of 2010, the School has awarded an estimated 6% of BS degrees and 7% of PhDs in aerospace engineering in the United States.
The VSS Enterprise crash occurred on October 31, 2014, when the VSS Enterprise, a SpaceShipTwo experimental spaceflight test vehicle operated by Virgin Galactic, suffered a catastrophic in-flight breakup during a test flight and crashed in the Mojave Desert near Cantil, California. Co-pilot Michael Alsbury was killed and pilot Peter Siebold was seriously injured.
Virgin Orbit is a company within the Virgin Group which plans to provide launch services for small satellites. The company was formed in 2017 to develop the air-launched LauncherOne rocket, launched from Cosmic Girl, which had previously been a project of Virgin Galactic. Based in Long Beach, California, Virgin Orbit has more than 300 employees led by president Dan Hart, a former vice president of government satellite systems at Boeing.
The Brooke Owens Fellowship is a paid internship and mentorship program for college undergraduate women seeking a career in aviation or space exploration. The fellowship was created to honor the memory of Brooke Owens, a pilot and space policy expert who died of cancer at the age of 36.
William Pomerantz is Vice President of Special Projects at Virgin Orbit. He was part of the team that created Virgin Orbit whilst working at Virgin Galactic. He is the co-founder of the Brooke Owens Fellowship and trustee of the United States Students for the Exploration and Development of Space organisation.
VSS Unity 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. VSS Unity was carried aloft by the White Knight Two carrier plane before being released. The spacecraft reached an apogee of 82.7 km (51.4 mi), the flight satisfied the United States definition of spaceflight, but fell short of the Kármán line, the internationally accepted standard. The flight was operated by Virgin Galactic, a private company led by Richard Branson which intends to conduct space tourism flights in the future. It was the first crewed spaceflight from U.S. soil since the Space Shuttle mission STS-135 in 2011.
Mark P. "Forger" Stucky is an American test pilot and commercial astronaut. In these roles, he is an employee of Virgin Galactic, a private spaceflight company which is developing sub-orbital space tourism flights.
Beth Moses is Chief Astronaut Instructor and Interiors Program Manager for Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo program, and is a commercial astronaut. She was the first woman to make a spaceflight on a commercially launched vehicle, the VSS Unity VF-01 flight of 22 February, 2019.
John Gedmark is an American entrepreneur, startup founder, and aerospace engineer. He is the co-founder and CEO of Astranis, and was the Founding Executive Director of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation.
