When NASA first announced its new partnership with Boeing and SpaceX, many people thought that space travel for the average citizen is one step closer to reality, and apparently they were right. The “space taxi” that the two companies are developing won’t just be for astronauts, it will also contain a seat for paying tourists.
That’s right, as part of Boeing’s proposal with NASA, the CST-100 vehicle will have a seat that is reserved for a regular citizen who is willing to pay to go up into space and float around in the International Space Station with trained professionals.
“Part of our proposal into NASA would be flying a Space Adventures spaceflight participant up to the ISS,” John Mulholland, Boeing’s Commercial Crew Program Manager, tells Reuters. Space Adventures is a Virginia-based space tourism company founded in 1998. Since 2010, they have been offering a number of spaceflight-related experiences, including spacewalks, suborbital spaceflights and launch tours.
Mr. Mulholland added that the price of the seat would be high enough to be competitive with what the Russian space agency is charging space tourists, which is a hell of a lot. According to Tom Shelley, president of Space Adventures, British singer Sarah Brightman is currently training for a 10-day stay at the station. In January, she’ll become the eighth paying passenger to visit the ISS, hitching a ride on the Russian Soyuz rocket, and it looks like the trip is going to cost her roughly $52 million.
Read more about the story at Reuters.
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