Posted inNews

2011: The Year in Review

Between EchoStar’s $2 billion purchase of broadband provider Hughes, the space shuttle’s retirement after three decades of operation and the first launch of a Russian rocket from European soil, the space industry continued to demonstrate during 2011 that it is as diverse and dynamic as any global industry.

by SpaceNews Staff
Posted inNews

Henry Vanderbilt, Founder, Space Access Society

Although he is a descendant of one of the 19th century’s richest men — shipping and railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt — Detroit native Henry Vanderbilt did not have a trust fund to fall back on when he dropped out of the University of Massachusetts in the mid-1970s. Instead, he performed a variety of jobs, including driving a cab, grinding brake shoes, developing optical missile-tracking technology, building surgical lasers, overseeing computer programs for the space advocacy group the L5 Society, and writing computer gaming software.

by Debra Werner
Posted inCommercial

Spotlight | Whittinghill Aerospace LLC

In May 2011, when NASA began looking for commercial suborbital launch vehicles to carry research payloads, George Whittinghill already was working under a NASA small business contract to design rockets capable of sending small satellites into low Earth orbit. After reading the solicitation, Whittinghill, the president and chief technical officer of Whittinghill Aerospace, realized that one of the modules that made up the first stage of his proposed four-stage orbital vehicle would meet the space agency’s requirement for a reusable rocket capable of providing a few minutes in microgravity for science and technology experiments.

by Debra Werner