World is not enough: Millionaires bet on space

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Closer to a space vacation?

CNBC's Jon Fortt and Jane Wells run down today's hot topics, including space travel, e-cigarette promotion in the U.K. and the maker of "Candy Crush" files for an IPO.

Knight Frank also noted the rising trend for investing in space research, be it space travel or asteroid mining. The estate agent said it had identified 70 "wealthy individuals", with a combined wealth of over $200 billion, who are targeting the growing space sector.

(Read more: Precious metal hunters look to outer space)

Bailey told CNBC that increasing numbers of wealthy individuals defined in Knight Frank's report as those with at least $30 million in investable assets had shown interest in the space industry over the last 12 months. He named U.S. technology millionaires as early movers in investing in the space.

"This is a risky sector," Bailey said. "The people who are investing in the sector are aware that they are at the cutting edge of technology, but they are taking the view that the potential rewards are enormous."

According to Space Affairs, established in 2000 as the "world's first commercial space agency", suborbital space flight will be a possibility for both businesses and tourists within years, rather than decades.

"In the next few years, suborbital spacecraft will transport scientific payloads and passengers into space. In the foreground of scientific payload is the natural exploration of Earth and the development of new materials and the test of it," Space Affairs said on its website.

However, Bailey warned that it would be more than 10 years before any impact from space travel was felt on property markets, and that this would depend on affordability.

"It is more than a decade away when this would likely to have an impact; there are considerable hurdles to overcome technology-wise... the question is how quickly the technology is democratized in terms of price point," he told CNBC.

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World is not enough: Millionaires bet on space

Higuain up for Argentina test

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Gonzalo Higuain: Argentina travel to face Romania

Argentina striker Gonzalo Higuain is anxiously looking forward to the World Cup and believes Wednesdays friendly against Romania will provide a good test for the South Americans.

The Albiceleste are playing their first friendly game of the year in Bucharest (kick-off 7pm GMT), with the World Cup in Brazil where they will face Bosnia-Herzegovina, Iran and Nigeria only 100 days away.

But Higuain knows the game against Romania is just an early warm-up for the major tournament and insists Argentina are only thinking about the summer showpiece.

We know how difficult qualifying was, but we hope we can play as well as we did in the qualifiers, he said.

The squad is great. Every time we all get together, we are happy.

We are all fully focused on the World Cup and on getting our minds ready for the tournament.

We have what it takes to have a good World Cup, but we should not talk too much about it now.

Former Liverpool midfielder Maxi Rodriguez currently playing for Newells Old Boys in Argentina added: Well try to fix some things because you cannot make mistakes at the World Cup.

The important thing is to be sure of what were capable of doing.

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Higuain up for Argentina test

Greater Community Spirituality (Chapter Seven) How Is Wisdom Achieved In Life? – Video

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Greater Community Spirituality (Chapter Seven) How Is Wisdom Achieved In Life?
https://www.newmessage.org/nmfg/Greater_Community_Spirituality.html Greater Community Spirituality presents a prophetic new understanding of God and human sp...

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Greater Community Spirituality (Chapter Seven) How Is Wisdom Achieved In Life? - Video

Greater Community Spirituality (Chapter Seven) Part Two How Is Wisdom Achieved In Life? – Video

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Greater Community Spirituality (Chapter Seven) Part Two How Is Wisdom Achieved In Life?
https://www.newmessage.org/nmfg/Greater_Community_Spirituality.html Greater Community Spirituality presents a prophetic new understanding of God and human sp...

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Greater Community Spirituality (Chapter Seven) Part Two How Is Wisdom Achieved In Life? - Video

Call of Duty: Ghosts Gameplay – Team Deathmatch on Sovereign – W/Commentary – Video

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Call of Duty: Ghosts Gameplay - Team Deathmatch on Sovereign - W/Commentary
See The Full Call of Duty Ghosts Series Here: http://goo.gl/hJVF5k Next CoD Ghosts Episode Here: http://youtu.be/x4EROERa1e4 Call of Duty Ghosts: Team Deathm...

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Call of Duty: Ghosts Gameplay - Team Deathmatch on Sovereign - W/Commentary - Video

Let’s Play Space Engineers – Episode 93: Space Station Project Part 22 – Video

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Let #39;s Play Space Engineers - Episode 93: Space Station Project Part 22
On this episode of Space Engineers, we continue the Space Station Project. This time we make some minor tweaks adjustments and do an overview of all the th...

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Let's Play Space Engineers - Episode 93: Space Station Project Part 22 - Video

International Space Station – ISS, passing over Porto Alegre RS on april 3rd 2014 – Video

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International Space Station - ISS, passing over Porto Alegre RS on april 3rd 2014
Estaco Espacial Internacional (ISS) passando sobre Porto Alegre - RS. 03 de Abril de 2014 as 04:31:56 da madrugada. Event Time Altitude Azimuth Distance (km...

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International Space Station - ISS, passing over Porto Alegre RS on april 3rd 2014 - Video

Crimea crisis comes at touchy time for US-Russia space program

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The political crisis in Crimea comes at a touchy time in the joint Russian-U.S. space program. Two cosmonauts, one of them from Crimea, and an American astronaut are scheduled to touch down on Russian soil on March 10 after months aboard the International Space Station.

One American and two cosmonauts are headed back into space in a few weeks. In a teleconference with reporters Tuesday, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said there are no problems. "Everything is nominal right now in our relationship with the Russians, " he said.

But since the retirement of the American space shuttle program, the U.S. relies entirely on Russia for human transport to and from the International Space Station and pays $70 million for every astronaut trip.

House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) said in a statement on Tuesday, that the U.S. needs to back away from the arrangement with Russia's space program.

"With the retirement of the Space Shuttle, America currently has no domestic capability to transport our astronauts to and from the International Space Station," The statement reads. "Our international space partnerships, including our partnership with Russia, are strong and have historically endured political division. But after decades of leadership in space, it is unacceptable for America to pay the Russians $70 million per seat for each of our astronauts to hitch a ride to space. NASA needs to develop a vehicle to launch American astronauts onboard American rockets from American soil. Leadership in space exploration is a goal worthy of a great nation."

Former astronaut Tom Jones says that NASA is intent on keeping ISS missions from becoming a political football.He points to the Apollo/Soyuz missions of the mid-70s, during the height of the Cold War, as evidence that the two countries cooperated in a spirit of detente.

Today, Jones says, the two space partners are more inter-dependent than ever. "What they lack for example, is all the control software that we use to point, maneuver and control the space station," he says. "So, they would not be wise to deny us access, because they would be denying themselves access to all the utilities and supplies they need for the space station."

Russians have an agreement with the U.S. that they are allowed to keep a gun in their possession on space missions.

Russian spacecraft have traditionally touched down on land. In the early space days, some cosmonauts occasionally had to fend off wolves while they awaited rescue crews.

Doug McKelway joined Fox News Channel (FNC) in November 2010 and serves as a Washington-based correspondent.

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Crimea crisis comes at touchy time for US-Russia space program

Space Station sensor to capture 'striking' lightning data

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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

4-Mar-2014

Contact: Laura Niles Laura.E.Niles@nasa.gov 281-244-7069 NASA/Johnson Space Center

Keeping a spare on hand simply makes sense. Just as drivers keep spare tires on hand to replace a flat or blowout, NASA routinely maintains "spares," too. These flight hardware backups allow NASA to seamlessly continue work in the unlikely event something goes down for a repair. When projects end, these handy spares can sometimes find second lives in new areas for use.

Researchers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., developed a sophisticated piece of flight hardware called a Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS) to detect and locate lightning over the tropical region of the globe. Launched into space in 1997 as part of NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), the sensor undertook a three-year baseline mission, delivering data used to improve weather forecasts. It continues to operate successfully aboard the TRMM satellite today.

The team that created this hardware in the mid-1990s built a spare -- and now that second unit is stepping up to contribute, as well. The sensor is scheduled to launch on a Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) rocket to the International Space Station in February 2016. Once mounted to the station, it will serve a two-year baseline mission as part of a U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Space Test Program (STP)-H5 science and technology development payload. STP-H5 is integrated and flown under the management and direction of the DoD's STP.

NASA selected the LIS spare hardware to fly to the space station in order to take advantage of the orbiting laboratory's high inclination. This vantage point gives the sensor the ability to "look" farther towards Earth's poles than the original LIS can aboard the TRMM satellite. Once installed, the sensor will monitor global lightning for Earth science studies, provide cross-sensor calibration and validation with other space-borne instruments, and ground-based lightning networks. LIS will also supply real-time lightning data over data-sparse regions, such as oceans, to support operational weather forecasting and warning.

"Only LIS globally detects all in-cloud and cloud-to-ground lightning -- what we call total lightning -- during both day and night," said Richard Blakeslee, LIS project scientist at Marshall. "As previously demonstrated by the TRMM mission, better understanding lightning and its connections to weather and related phenomena can provide unique and affordable gap-filling information to a variety of science disciplines including weather, climate, atmospheric chemistry and lightning physics."

LIS measures the amount, rate and radiant energy of global lightning, providing storm-scale resolution, millisecond timing, and high, uniform-detection efficiency -- and it does this without land-ocean bias.

The sensor consists of an optical imager enhanced to locate and detect lightning from thunderstorms within its 400-by-400-mile field-of-view on the Earth's surface. The station travels more than 17,000 mph as it orbits our planet, allowing the LIS to observe a point on the Earth, or a cloud, for almost 90 seconds as it passes overhead. Despite this brief viewing duration, it is long enough to estimate the lightning-flashing rate of most storms.

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Space Station sensor to capture 'striking' lightning data