NYT: Space Tourism May Mean One Giant Leap for Researchers

Kenneth Chang at the New York Times has a good article today about the suborbital researchers conference going on in Orlando. The article focuses on how scientists can use suborbital flight opportunities provided by companies like Virgin Galactic, XCOR, Blue Origin and Masten Space Systems. In some cases, scientists can go along for the ride if they have about $200,000 for a ticket.

“Scientists currently have a few options for investigating weightlessness. They can drop the experiment from a tall tower, which provides a couple of seconds of zero gravity before it goes splat on the ground. They can send the experiment up in an airplane that flies an arcing trajectory known as a parabola, which provides up to half a minute of apparent weightlessness. Or they can get something to the International Space Station, where the pull of gravity is continuously absent.

“The suborbital flights will offer an opportunity that falls between the parabolic plane flights and the space station.”