A county in Arizona has just approved a deal worth $14.5 million to a that plans to bring a space-like experience to the non-NASA-trained everyman, with the help of a balloon ride and a parafoil.
The annals of the multi-million deal seem symbiotically beneficial: Arizona's Pima county will construct the spaceport, which the company World View will in turn use by renting it out. The spaceport will also be open for public use for residents that meet the spaceflight regulatory standards.
While the company is known for their travel experiences -- like former Google exec Alan Eustace's space dive, which WV collaborated on as a special one-time project -- it also take part in flying implements communications, surveillance, and weather research for a bevy of academic institutions and agencies like NASA.
For the uninitiated, the concept of traveling on a space balloon refers to embarking on a controlled ascent and descent with a specially-made parafoil from an astronomically high point in the stratosphere - think something around 100,000 feet --- with the added allure of coming as close to space as a human without the comfort of a space shuttle can possibly get. The concept is simple: after "lift-off" in a special capsule, a weather balloon-like apparatus floats the rider up into the sky, staying up there for about one to two hours, and afterwards deflates; the participant is able to take a ride down steered with help from the WV accoutrements.
Why Arizona? As WVE CEO Taber MacCallum points out, Arizona has the ideal climate and general conditions for commercial space ballooning, with predictable weather and little air traffic.
Of course, the purpose behind the spaceport wouldn't be entirely recreational. As Tech Crunch noted, the base could serve as a hotbed for private contracting, accommodating everything from telescopic observational activity to remote sensing.
Learn more about space ballooning in the video clip below.
Via: Tech Crunch