Getting the flavor of...The status of space travel

The status of space travel

Space tourism recently took a big step toward becoming an everyday reality, said Kenneth Chang in The New York Times. On April 29, a Virgin Galactic spaceship with room for six passengers made its first powered flight before landing safely about 10 minutes later. The successful California test emboldened Virgin founder Richard Branson to predict that his space division will be carrying tourists by early 2014, if not sooner. For its April flight, SpaceShipTwo was launched by a carrier aircraft before it fired its own engine and reached an altitude of about 10.5 miles. It’ll be pushed to fly higher and faster in future tests before the first passengers, including Branson and his children, step on. While Virgin Galactic isn’t the only private company seeking to put tourists in space, it looks likely to become the first to make the journeys routine. Currently, 560 brave people hold SpaceShipTwo tickets, which cost $200,000 a pop.

An old-fashioned Caribbean sail

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On the day that passengers were allowed to climb to our ship’s crow nest, I was not first in line, said Peter Mandel in The Dallas Morning News. Cruising the Caribbean in the five-mast Royal Clipper (starclippers.com) had been a surprising blend of luxury living and hands-on education, but I needed more time to get my courage up. The vessel, the world’s largest full-rigged sailing ship, had set sail from Barbados a few days earlier, and all 227 passengers were allowed to help out—“a little bit”—as the crew unfurled its 42 sails. Between fine meals in the multilevel dining room and dips in the ship’s two pools, many of us also took turns manning the oak wheel on the always-open bridge. Maybe it was the thought of other passengers’ waiting behind me that finally got me moving toward that crow’s nest. Halfway up, I hear a new sound—the sound of the Royal Clipper “humming itself some low-octave song.”