Virgin Galactic - Seedhouse, Erik

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Résumé :
Thirty years ago when Sir Richard Branson called up Boeing and asked if they had a spare 747, few would have predicted the brash entrepreneur would so radically transform the placid business of air travel. But today, Branson flies airlines on six continents, employs hundreds of jets and, in 2014, was predicting that his spaceship company ? Virgin Galactic ? would soon open the space frontier to commercial astronauts, payload specialists, scientists and space tourists. With more than 600 seats sold at dollars250,000 each, what started off as a dream to send people just for the excitement to look back and marvel at Earth, was on the cusp of finally being turned into a business. ? Then, on October 21, 2014, tragedy struck. SpaceShipTwo was on its most ambitious test flight to date. Seconds after firing its engine, Virgin Galactic?s spaceship was breaking through the sound barrier. In just the three seconds that it took for the vehicle to climb from Mach 0.94 to Mach 1.02, co-pilot Mike Alsbury made what many close to the event believe was a fatal mistake that led to his death and the disintegration of SpaceShipTwo. Miraculously, the pilot, Peter Siebold, survived the 16-km fall back to Earth. Soon after the event Branson vowed to continue his space tourism venture in spite of this. Already a second SpaceShipTwo is being built, and ticket-holders eagerly await the day when Virgin Galactic offers quick, routine and affordable access to the edge of space. This book explains the hurdles Virgin Galactic had and still has to overcome en route to developing suborbital space travel as a profitable economic entity, and describes the missions that will be flown on board SpaceShipTwo Mk II, including high-altitude science studies, astronomy, life sciences, and microgravity physics.

Biographie:
Dr. Erik Seedhouse is an associate professor in spaceflight operations and a research scientist specializing in space life sciences and physiology, the subject in which he obtained his PhD while working for the European Space Agency between 1996 and 1998. In 2009, he was one of the final candidates for selection as an astronaut in the CSA's Astronaut Recruitment Campaign. Through the International Institute of Astronautical Sciences and he he completed his suborbital scientist astronaut certification and hopes to fly on a suborbital vehicle in the near future. Between 2008-13, Seedhouse was Director of Canada's Manned Centrifuge and Hypobaric Chamber Operations. He works as an associate professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, a manned spaceflight consultant, triathlon coach, occasional Hollywood consultant, author and public speaker....

Sommaire:
Suborbital Flight/: A Primer.- X-Prize.- SpaceShipOne.- Scaled Composites.- Spaceport in New Mexico.- Medical and Training Requirements.- Meet the Passengers.- Missions.- Beyond Suborbital Space.