Space hotel to open in 2012

A first hotel in space will be open for business and accepting tourists by 2012 after an anonymous billionaire space enthusiast granted $3billion to finance the project. The Space Resort will charge 3 million euros for a three-night stay and eight-week training course on a tropical island before the trip.

Source: dailymail.co.uk; find article here>>.

ECJ: Art 22.2 Montreal Convention - material/non-material damage

Reference for a preliminary ruling from the Juzgado de lo Mercantil 4, Barcelona

Case C-69/09 (Walz/Clickair)

Question referred:

Does the limit of liability referred to in Article 22.2 of the Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules for International Carriage, signed in Montreal on 28 May 1999, include both non-material damage and material damage resulting from the loss of baggage?

International space Station awaiting tourist

The orbital path of the International Space Station (ISS) was successfully adjusted Saturday to accommodate the landing of the world's sixth space tourist in eight days time, Interfax reported citing Russian space programme officials.

Multi-millionaire US businessman Garriott is the son of US astronaut Owen Garriott. He paid more than 30 million dollars (20 million euros) to be launched into space from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, according to Space Adventures, the US-based company that organised his trip.

Source: eTurboNews; read full article here>>.

Air Hostess Picks Up Chocolate Bar, Wins Space Trip

I thought Willy Wonka only gave away tours of the Chocolate Factory - not space...

Wed Jul 16, 11:02 AM ET

PARIS (Reuters) - A French air hostess will become one of Europe's pioneer space tourists after picking a chocolate wrapper out of the rubbish and finding a winning number in a competition to fly to the upper reaches of the earth's atmosphere.
Mathilde Epron, 32, said she had bought a Kit Kat chocolate bar at her local supermarket but initially threw the wrapper in the bin, telling herself that "it's only others who win."
Two hours later, thinking back to the competition, she decided to try her luck and fished the wrapper out of the bin, only to find a code marked inside.
"For someone who works in air travel it's really a dream come true," she told France Info radio.A spokeswoman for Nestle in France confirmed that Epron had won the prize to take a flight on a four-seater, fighter-sized aircraft built by Rocketplane, a company that builds aircraft intended to provide cheap flights into space.
She will receive four days of astronaut training in Oklahoma City in the United States before boarding the Rocketplane XP aircraft which will reach an altitude of 100 km (60 miles) and allow a five-minute experience of weightlessness.

Russia: end to space tourism in 2010

On Cosmonaut's Day (April 12th 2008) the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roskosmos) announced that they will cease it's $40,000,000-a-flight space tourism enterprise.

Read full article here>>.

Space Tourism faces challenges from insurance companies

The personal spaceflight business — also known as space tourism — will face high hurdles from the insurance business in its early years, according to several industry experts.
Policy costs will be extremely high until companies fly without incident at least three times. And a string of early failures may well doom startups to business failure, one of three insurance experts on a panel about the subject said during a panel discussion at the Federal Aviation Administration's annual Commercial Space Transportation Conference.

Source: foxnews.com; read full article here.

"The evolving role of law in aerospace activities"

The Daily News publishes a very interesting article of Dr. Ruwantissa Abeyratne, Coordinator of Air Transport Programmes at the International Civil Aviation Organisation, containing excerpts from a legal lecture of the Royal Aeronautical Society, Montreal Branch, delivered on August 3, 2007 at ICAO Headquarters, Montreal, that is available in full text.

Mir Hotel

Walt Anderson, the US venture capitalist and backer of the Mir Space Station has suggested that the Mir Station could be converted into a tourist attraction. He estimates that the first holiday would cost $40m but thereafter the price would fall to "a more reasonable $20-$25m". Sales of such holidays in the EU would of course be subject to the Package Travel Directive!

(Originally posted by John Downes)