Virgin Galactic's Rocket Man

August 13, 2018

Virgin Galactic's Rocket Man

(This article was originally published in the August 20th 2018 issue of The New Yorker Magazine)

By Nicholas Schmidle

At 5 a.m. on April 5th, Mark Stucky drove to an airstrip in Mojave, California, and gazed at SpaceShipTwo, a sixty-foot-long craft that is owned by Virgin Galactic, a part of the Virgin Group. Painted white and bathed in floodlight, it resembled a sleek fighter plane, but its mission was to ferry thousands of tourists to and from space.

Read The Full Story

Also in News

The Journey to Alpha Centauri

October 16, 2019

As scientists look out into other solar systems and even into other galaxies, one of the things they look for is other earth-like planets. Of course while doing this we’re searching for signs of life but we’re also searching for insights into how our own planet was formed and what it takes to support life. However, visiting any of these planets has been a pipe dream because of the vast distances between us and them. That is, until recently.

Mining The Moon: Top 5 Rare Resources

September 27, 2019

There has been a lot of excitement building around NASA’s plan to revisit the moon. Not only do we have more exploring to do, but there are also plans to build a moon base and have humans occupy deep space for extended amounts of time. Returning to the moon offers humanity a source economic growth as well as scientific advances. The moon is, after all, abundant in resources that we have limited access to here on Earth. though speculative, mining the moon is very much on the table.

Space's Role in Climate Change

September 18, 2019

Rising global temperatures caused by climate change is of grave concern to everyone who calls Earth home. In order to manage it, we need to be able to measure it. Through the use of satellites, we are able to measure all important climate related data.