When Atlantis came back to Earth last July, marking the end of the U.S. space shuttle program, many lamented the passing of NASA’s big-dreams era. The cover of The Economist even went so far as to proclaim “the end of the space age.” But that’s about as far from the truth as Earth is from Mars. We are in fact at the dawn of what might be called Space Age 2.0, in which private citizens will soon be making regular flights to suborbit. Many would therefore argue that the seminal event in spaceflight last year was not the final mission of Atlantis but the continuing evolution of SpaceShipTwo, Virgin Galactic’s two-pilot, six-passenger spacefaring rocket ship.
Evolved from a smaller rocket craft designed by aerospace guru Burt Rutan that won the $10 million Ansari X Prize in 2004, SS2 will whisk paying customers 65 miles upward, giving them a brief period ...
