Important Innovations

Billionaires Race to Space Source:  Blue Origin  -  Jeff Bezos & his space vehicle Blue Origin Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is in a race to win the highly competitive drive to commercialize space.  His company Blue Origin has a mission:  to provide low cost travel to space.  He's in a battle for space with two other billionaires - Elon Musk of SpaceX and Sir Richard Branson of Virgin Galactic. Take-Off 2019 Bezos finances Blue Origin with $1 billion in Amazon stock yearly.  His system consists of a pressurized crew capsule on top of a reusable  "New Shepherd" rocket.  The system has been successfully tested several times. Experts expect the first crewed flight in the first half of 2019. Blue Origin has yet to leave the Earth's atmosphere.  SpaceX Falcon Heavy has soared into space.  Virgin Galactic's Unity spaceship recently crossed into the outer edges of space. New, Blue Origin Rocket Bezos is developing the new BE-4 rocket engines.  NASA astron

British Spaceport in Scotland The UK is building its 1st commercial spaceport in northern Scotland.  They expect it to bring new jobs and billions of pounds to the British economy.  The vertical launch commercial facility is being built by Lockheed Martin along with a delivery vehicle to deploy up to 6 small satellites.  A British company is building a rocket for the site. Race to Riches Space is viewed as one of  the next big things for commercial development.  That's spurring a lot of plans to get a piece of the orbiting economy.  10 spaceports have been approved in the US. Locations include Texas, Georgia and Alaska.  In Canada, a spaceport is cleared for Nova Scotia with an initial launch set for 2021. British First The UK's spaceport is Europe's 1st one-stop location for building, launching and operating satellites.  They're putting up $66 million to develop their base to capitalize on commercializing space.  They believe their strategic, northern latitud