World View Enterprises
| Private | |
| Industry | Aerospace and Space Tourism |
| Founded | October 2013 |
| Headquarters | Tucson, Arizona |
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Key people
|
Jane Poynter (CEO) Taber MacCallum (CTO) Alan Stern (Chief Scientist) Mark Kelly |
| Website | www.worldviewexperience.com |
World View Enterprises, Inc., or World View, is a private American near-space exploration company headquartered in Tucson, Arizona, that plans to use high-altitude helium balloons to gently lift people and scientific payloads twenty miles (approximately 32 kilometers) above earth for the purposes of space tourism, scientific research, and a wide range of other commercial applications.
World View plans to offer private citizens views of the curvature of the earth amidst the blackness of space from inside a pressurized space-rated vehicle suspended beneath a high-altitude balloon. The space-rated capsule, which will hold six passengers and two crew members, will ascend during a nominal flight profile to an altitude of 100,000 feet (20 miles, or 32 kilometers) above earth.
During a test flight in June 2014 World View successfully deployed and remotely navigated a parafoil back down to earth from an altitude of 50,000 feet.
An October 2015 test flight brought a 10-percent scale passenger capsule to over 100,000 feet altitude; a full-scale test is anticipated to follow.
A September 2016 flight carried a small, unmanned, scientific payload to an altitude of over 100,000 feet on behalf of the Southwest Research Institute through NASA's Flight Opportunities Program.
World View is planning to operate its commercial flights from Spaceport Tucson beginning in 2017.
Jane Poynter, co-founder and CEO, was one of the original eight Biosphere 2 crew members. After two years inside Biosphere 2 (a three-acre, hermetically-sealed environment in the Arizona desert,) she went on to co-found Paragon Space Development Corporation, which designs and manufactures life support technologies rated for extreme environments, including outer space. Paragon has supplied hardware to more than 70 spaceflight missions, including ones to the International Space Station and Mir.
Taber MacCallum, co-founder and CTO, was also one of the original Biosphere 2 crew members and went on to co-found Paragon Space Development Corporation alongside Jane Poynter. Taber MacCallum was named Popular Science Inventor of the Year in 2008 for a toxic water diving suit that helps hazmat divers safely navigate contaminated waters.
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