May 17 2005
From The Space Library
President of Canadian Arrow Geoff Sheerin and Indian-American entrepreneur Chirinjeev Kathuria joined forces to create a new corporation called PlanetSpace. The company's goal was to make spaceflight available to the public within two years. Canadian Arrow was creating a rocket based on the German World War II V-2 rocket. Although the company had not completed its rocket in time to compete for the US$10 million X Prize in 2004, it had successfully completed a drop test of the vehicle in August 2005 and expected to complete the rocket within one year. PlanetSpace planned to charge US$250,000 per person for a suborbital flight that would include 14 days of training and 15 minutes of flight time. The rocket would launch from a Canadian site with a pilot and two passengers and would reach a maximum velocity of four times the speed of sound. The rocket would coast to a maximum height of 70 miles (112 kilometers), providing a few minutes of weightlessness and a view of the curving Earth with a black sky above. Finally, a crew capsule would separate from the rocket during its descent and would parachute down to a water landing. (PlanetSpace, “Canadian Arrow Partners with Leading American Entrepreneur To Launch First Commercial Passengers to Space,” news release, 17 May 2005, http://www.planetspace.org/pdf/ps-press-rel-001.pdf (accessed 17 September 2009); Alan Boyle, “Space Partners Plan Flights in 2007,” MSNBC.com, 18 May 2005, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7879142/ (accessed 17 September 2009).)
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