LA firm raises £450m to 3D-print rockets to help us live on Mars (really) June 9, 2021 Blackrock and actor Jared Leto are among investors in a $650m (£450m) capital raise by a Californian firm which plans to 3D-print rocket boosters that the founder claims are part of efforts to live on Mars. Relativity Space, founded by Tim Ellis – a former engineer at Jeff Bezos’ space firm Blue Origin – is [...]
Bezos Lightyear: Amazon founder set for space June 7, 2021 Amazon founder Jeff Bezos will join the winner of a competition on Blue Origin’s first human spaceflight, with 20 July the target launchdate. Writing on Instagram, the world’s richest man said that he and his brother Mark would join the winner of an auction on New Shepard’s first suborbital sightseeing trip. Bidding for the final [...]
Ready, set, go: Britain is bound for the next space race May 26, 2021 The UK is bound for a seat in the next space race, the transport secretary has said today, as the government preps for Virgin’s commercial Orbit mission – the UK’s first space-bound flight. The National Space Agency (NSA) confirmed on Monday that spaceflights will soon be a reality as the government has funded spaceports that [...]
UK companies to help plot ‘constellation’ of satellites around the Moon May 20, 2021 UK space companies have begun developing navigation and telecommunication capabilities to put a ‘constellation’ of satellites around the Moon, according to the European Space Agency (ESA) today. With funding from the UK Space Agency, Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL), Inmarsat and MDA Space and Robotics have bagged £2m contracts with the ESA for the satellite [...]
The travel industry will not survive without a radical U-turn September 24, 2020 The tourism and outbound travel industries are no strangers to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. Across the globe, international and domestic travel has been brought to its knees by the far-reaching impacts of coronavirus, and the ramifications are no clearer than in the United Kingdom. In the last month alone, we have seen the [...]
The travel industry will not survive without a radical U-turn August 27, 2020 The UK has a rich history as a global transport hub. While we all value our holidays as individuals, the value of travel to the UK economy cannot be overlooked. In 2019, the 40.9m overseas visitors who came to the UK spent £28.4bn. While many of us don’t consider the UK economy to be as [...]
Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic spaceship passes construction milestone January 8, 2020 Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic has reached a major milestone in the construction of its next passenger spaceship, it said. All major structural elements have been assembled, and the rocket is standing on its landing gear at Mojave Air and Space Port in California. Read more: Sir Richard Branson set to launch Virgin Galactic IPO [...]
Virgin Galactic shares blast off as Sir Richard Branson’s firm makes New York Stock Exchange debut October 28, 2019 Sir Richard Branson’s space tourism venture, Virgin Galactic, has taken off on the New York Stock Exchange this afternoon, with shares soaring more than eight per cent in early trading. The company completed a merger with a US investment vehicle late on Friday, making it the first commercial space venture to go public. Branson, who [...]
Space race: Boeing invests $20m in Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic as it prepares public listing October 8, 2019 Boeing is to invest $20m in Sir Richard Branson’s space-tourism venture Virgin Galactic, meaning it will have more money to take on rivals such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos in the commercial space race. Branson founded space venture Virgin Galactic in a bid to cash in on rising demand for space travel. He is [...]
Blast off: Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic plots public listing July 9, 2019 Space may be the final frontier, but Virgin Galactic is readying itself to overcome a fresh obstacle before launching into the great unknown: a stock market listing. Sir Richard Branson’s space-tourism venture is planning to go public as part of a deal with a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC). Read more: Fifty years on from the [...]