h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

If missions have failed, I don't know if people are going to want to be in them. I remember Christa McAuliffe and the Challenger fiasco. I had to watch it blow up endlessly on tv because nothing else was on.

LauncherOne wasn't a manned launcher (though the aircraft that released it in the upper atmosphere was) so no-one was hurt other than their pride and bank balance. Unlike, sadly, sister-company Virgin Galactic, where one person died on the VSS Enterprise.

In the UK the Challenger disaster was first reported on children's news programme 'Newsround' and was considered their biggest news coup.

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Great photos - the perspective gives a sense of the scale of the rocket

Interesting to learn more about the programme, too. I did think that Spaceport Cornwall was a replacement for Spaceport Seacombe at first, but it's not a museum, I see

Not often you see a behind a city wall's gatehouse built in 1180.

(Though sadly it was closer to where they've knocked down the old Bargate Shopping Centre and plan to build a larger, replacement shopping centre in their never-ending quest to have more restaurants in Southampton than people).

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I truly appreciate these images of the rocket - especially as I can now, through the magic of Microsoft Designer, stick that rocket everywhere.

In other news, Virgin Orbit's sister space tourism company Virgin Galactic had its first passenger flight yesterday, and the VSS Unity succeeded in its flight without exploding. Though at £350,000 (about $450,000/USD) tickets aren't cheap - I wonder if the people onboard were thinking of how the Titan was lost this week when they went up.

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