Reserve your suborbital seats

Most of the U.S. is at least dimly aware of Richard Branson's plan to sell seats to sub orbital space on spaceship 2.  Virgin Galactic has not been shy about promoting their business venture with Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites team.  The same populace also has a vague notion that some very wealthy folks have been able to buy their way to the International Space Station via Russian Rockets.

There are other games in town, however, with the latest and most exciting being an agreement between Armadillo Aerospace and Space Adventures.  Space Adventures is the VA based company that brokered all those flights to the space station.  They also own the parabolic flight outfit, Zero-G, to give folks a shot at some weightless fun without leaving the atmosphere.

The agreement with Armadillo allows them to offer a service between those two end points.  They are signed up to be the sole provider of suborbital trips on Armadillo rockets.  It is not clear at this point how the agreement is structured.  Will Space Adventures Own and operate the rockets or simply broker the flights?  My guess is that they will form a subsidiary company to do the former or perhaps as a branch of Zero-G.

While pure speculation, I assume that in exchange for the exclusive rights to sell flights on Armadillo craft, Space Adventures would front some money for development in addition to a signed purchase agreement.  They would be invaluable for market research and aiding Armadillo in clearing regulatory issues as well.

The intrepid Pixel rocket went from a napkin sketch to a flying craft in three months.  This next vehicle shares many design elements with a scaled up Pixel.  Hopefully they can have the propulsion system hovering by fall.