Personal Spaceflight Resources

 

 

We hope the information below will help you understand the issues behind this Conrad Award category. Remember, if you don't find answers to your questions here, registered teams can ask our experts.

About Personal Spaceflight

Design an innovative product for use in personal spaceflight.

Since 1961 humans have been traveling in space; however, only in the last decade we've seen commercial flights open for paying passengers. If you were going into space, what would improve your experience? We challenge high school students to create innovative products to improve life for space explorers. Concepts can be for use in any part of human spaceflight. Sign up to compete in this challenge by creating your own innovative concept for personal use in space.

Personal Spaceflight Resources

What is Personal Spaceflight?

Personal Spaceflight is sometimes also referred to as "commercial human spaceflight" or "space tourism", referring to private customers who pay to go to space. There have been several participants already who have flown to the International Space Station aboard the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, including Anousheh Ansari, Greg Olsen, and Richard Garriot, among others.

Richard Garriot's Launch to the ISS

Future personal spaceflight participants may also fly aboard suborbital transportation vehicles, produced by companies such as Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, Armadillo Aerospace, XCOR Aerospace, EADS Astrium, and/or Rocketplane Limited.

Would you rather orbit the Earth? Other than Space Adventures, which currently arranges trips to the ISS, private companies such as SpaceX, Excalibur Almaz, and Bigelow Aerospace are developing spacecraft which would support orbital personal spaceflight in the future.

The Personal Spaceflight Federation http://www.personalspaceflight.org/

NASA Living in Space homepage http://www.spaceflight.nasa.gov/living/

Introduction to living in space http://www.spacefuture.com/habitat/living.shtml

Living in the International Space Station: http://www.pbs.org/spacestation/station/living/htm