![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/vss4454497351_3dd7af2c23_o.jpg?ssl=1\" "\\"VSS")
<\/a><\/p>\nThat, my fellow space nuts, is White Knight Two (VMS Eve) carrying the very first SpaceShipTwo (VSS Enterprise) on its maiden voyage into the sky. The last time we saw something this momentous it was almost 7 years ago when the very first White Knight was carrying the first private sub-orbital vehicle SpaceShipOne into the sky. It’s been a long time coming and I’m sure that everyone at Scaled Composites and Virgin Galactic are over the moon that they can write down this first 3 hour test flight as a success.<\/p>\n
The media<\/a> has<\/a> lit<\/a> up<\/a> in response to seeing the iconic pair up in the air and with good reason, it signals the dawn of a new era for those who need (or want) cheap access to space. I’m not just talking about those of us who are after those 5 minutes of weightlessness and the spectacular view of our precious blue marble. No there’s another class of people who are excited about the prospect of cheap space access, scientists<\/a>:<\/p>\n But this next generation of rockets from Virgin Galactic<\/a> (Richard Branson\u2019s effort with Space Ship 2, a model of which is pictured above), Blue Origin<\/a> (Jeff Bezos from Amazon.com), and others will reach a height making a lot of this science possible. The region up to 100 km is too high to reach by balloon, and too low for orbital rockets, which is why it\u2019s been dubbed “the ignorosphere”. But it has its uses\u2026<\/p>\n Observations of the Sun, for example, may not need much time to do because (you may have noticed) the Sun is pretty bright, so a three or four minute flight is enough to get some good data. The way incoming energy from the Sun couples with the Earth\u2019s atmosphere is not hugely well understood, and a lot of it happens in this region high above the planet\u2019s surface. Effects of low gravity on the human body can be tested, as well as on plants and other biological systems.<\/p>\n In fact, enough science can be done on these trips that the conference itself brought in 250 people<\/em> interested in the topic. I was surprised at how many people came, as were the conference planners themselves: they were expecting half that many.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n