Space Tourist #3

Topic(s): science
2004-03-30 00:08:12 PST

Congratulations go to Gregory Olsen! Following the trips of Dennis Tito and Mark Shutleworth, Mr. Olsen will be the the third tourist to visit space: Space Adventures Announces American Entrepreneur As Next Private Space Explorer. Word amongst us space geeks is that Space Adventures Corp. has tourists lining up. My guess is that Space Adventures Corp will be doing nice business in the coming several years/decades.

The cost of the trip really isn't that high - just $20 million.

Side note here... That $20 million figure happens to correlate closely with another figure. Every launch of a Russian Soyuz spacecraft (former Soviet Russia's equivalent of the Space Shuttle) costs just about $20 million. That means the Russians are launching a spacecraft at no cost to the Russian taxpayers. Compare that to $500 million (I misquoted this at $1 billion in an earlier post) per launch of the Space Shutle.

What prohibits me from becoming a space tourist is the cost. No doubt I'd do it if I had $20 million. Sadly, $20 million is about $19.9 million too high for me though.

I think the $20 million figure will remain there for a decade or so. Then somebody will realize that there's a lot of money to be made. I don't know if that somebody will be a US company or some foreign government (Russian, Chinese, Indian, Brazilian). I do know for certainty that it will not be the slumbering bear that is NASA. Anyway, some company or government will create a space vehicle constructed with the sole purpose of ferrying tourists to a space station. At that point we'll have competing companies, and the price will drop down low enough to where a modest percentage of Americans can make the trip.

name:
email:
url:
response: