Virgin Galactic to launch tourism and scientific research space flights from the United Arab Emirates capital. In July 2011, Aabar invested a further to develop a program to launch small satellites into low Earth orbit, raising their equity share to 37.8%. Virgin announced in June 2014 that they were in talks with Google about the injection of capital to fund both development and operations. The New Mexico government has invested approaching $200m (£121m) in the Spaceport America facility, for which Virgin Galactic is the anchor tenant; other commercial space companies also use the site. In February 2007, Virgin announced that they had
Space Tourism Society provide the vision and voice for the evolution of humanity off-world in a humane, fun, and beautiful direction. STS was created to inspire people to build real products for future use in space. , the president of the society, John Spencer, is designing a space yacht aimed for cruising in Earth orbit. Space Tourism Society The Space Tourism Society (STS) was founded in 1996. It is the first organization specifically focused on the space tourism industry. Their stated goals, quoted from their website: "To conduct the research, build public desire, and acquire the financial and political power to make space