Yesterday, after nearly 20 years of pursuing his mission to take people into space, Richard Branson quietly admitted that hadn’t been the right strategy.
“Let’s open space to many more missions by dramatically decreasing the price of each flight… but with satellites instead of people,” said Branson as he unveiled Virgin Orbit.
Orbit is a new business arm that will, you guessed it, focus on launching commercial satellites.
Competition in space travel is undoubtedly a good thing, Musk’s SpaceX has dramatically reduced the price of launching stuff into space by aggressively bidding for NASA contracts.
Yesterday it was also revealed that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is aiming for his own space business, Blue Origin, to launch deliveries to a future human settlement on the moon.
The silver lining is that if Branson’s about-turn results in more space businesses competing to make spaceflight ever-cheaper for mankind, that’s gotta be a good thing.
Branson admits Virgin space mission was going the wrong direction
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About-turn
Yesterday, after nearly 20 years of pursuing his mission to take people into space, Richard Branson quietly admitted that hadn’t been the right strategy.
“Let’s open space to many more missions by dramatically decreasing the price of each flight… but with satellites instead of people,” said Branson as he unveiled Virgin Orbit.
Orbit is a new business arm that will, you guessed it, focus on launching commercial satellites.
Competition in space travel is undoubtedly a good thing, Musk’s SpaceX has dramatically reduced the price of launching stuff into space by aggressively bidding for NASA contracts.
Yesterday it was also revealed that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is aiming for his own space business, Blue Origin, to launch deliveries to a future human settlement on the moon.
The silver lining is that if Branson’s about-turn results in more space businesses competing to make spaceflight ever-cheaper for mankind, that’s gotta be a good thing.
Technology
via Hacker News http://ift.tt/YV9WJO
March 3, 2017 at 01:28AM