AERA Corporation
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AERA Corporation refers to a prospective space tourism company that claims it will operate the "the safest space flight system ever created." Altairis, SACI's first generation suborbital spacecraft. It is vertically launched, lands horizontally and can send seven passengers to space. The first flight was originally scheduled for 2006, however this has slipped to mid-2007[1].
It appears the AERA website has been moved to a new domain under its true company name, AeraSpaceTours. Copies of animations and images are available on this site. AeraSpaceTours appears to be an operator, much like an Airline company. The designer and manufacturer of the Altairis is being built by a different company, Sprague Astronautics.
While the company has been highly secretive regarding its internal activities, some sources outside the company claim that the design of the Altairis was begun in the late 1990's, and that SACI has completed significant hardware testing.
[edit] See also
- Private spaceflight
- Virgin Galactic - Space tourism company started by Richard Branson and Scaled Composites
- Rocketplane Limited, Inc. - Space tourism company funded by George French
- SpaceX - Space tourism company funded by Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal
- Blue Origin - Space tourism company funded by Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com
- Armadillo Aerospace - Space tourism by John Carmack, creator of Doom and Quake
- List of private spaceflight companies - A compiled list of private spaceflight companies