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
Tourism and the degree to which countries play in the global context. Not only as a result of the important economic contribution of the tourism industry, but also as an indicator of the degree of confidence with which global citizens leverage the resources of the globe for the benefit of their local economies. This is why any projections of growth in tourism may serve as an indication of the relative influence that each country will exercise in the future. There has been a limited amount of orbital space tourism, with only the Russian Space Agency providing transport to date. A 2010