Today's launch of a paying civilian into orbit may be the
last one for some time.
The Russian rockets that have been carrying
rich private citizens to space consistently since 2001, through deals
brokered by the U.S. firm Space Adventures, may soon be booked up by
professional astronauts.
NASA and its international partners are planning to boost the
International Space Station (ISS) from hosting crews of three to crews of six spaceflyers
sometime this summer. The space population boom could mean that professional
station astronauts will need every spare seat on the Russian Soyuz spacecrafts,
as well as on the up to eight remaining space shuttle flights, that launch to
the orbiting lab.
"It makes it more difficult to obtain flight opportunities
on the missions that are scheduled to rotate crews," Space Adventures
president Eric Anderson recently told SPACE.com.
American billionaire
Charles Simonyi lifted off toward the International Space Station (ISS) this
morning on a Russian rocket, after paying the Russian Federal Space Agency $35
million through Space Adventures. The trip is Simonyi's second – he previously
flew to the ISS in 2007 – but could be the firm's last for a couple years.
"I'm actually optimistic, but it's too early to
tell," Anderson said. "Even with a [space station] crew of six people
it's conceivable that there might be a couple of seats for commercial purposes
for 2010 or 2011."
However, NASA didn't sound so sure.
"Today the plan is to fly one more – it's not a
tourist, it's a Kazakh-trained crewmember that's been with them for a
while," NASA ISS program manager Mike Suffredini said earlier this month.
"We'd consider him a crewmember actually, given his experience and the
time he's been in training. That's to occur this fall, and we've been informed
that will be the last, at least from a planning perspective, that is the last
of the tourists to fly."
To be sure that some opportunities are left open in the
future, the Vienna, Va.-based Space Adventures plans to book an entire future
Soyuz flight for its clients. Russia's Soyuz spacecraft are three-person
vehicles. During usual space tourist flights, one seat is filled by a paying
customer, while the other two are filled by professional spaceflyers.
"The objective would be a tourist mission,"
Anderson said. "The mission would be paid for entirely by Space Adventures
for the purposes of tourism."
This flight, which would be piloted by one professional astronaut
and carry two paying passengers, would not occur until 2011 or 2012.
That reservation may come in especially handy when NASA
retires its shuttle fleet in 2010, putting the burden of ferrying astronauts to
and from the space station entirely on the Soyuz vehicles.
For Simonyi's part, the Hungarian-born software executive
seems to have fit
in his flight just under the wire.
"I'm extremely lucky that
this particular balance of costs and benefits occurred where it was possible
for a not ridiculous amount [of money] to participate and contribute," he
told SPACE.com. "These ratios of costs will change, and in the near
future I think the costs will increase quite a bit and the availability will go
down."
Ultimately, though, Simonyi said the future of private space
travel is bright.
"Look at Star Trek," he said. "When people watch
Star Trek they don't think that this is impossible. They think it is absolutely
natural, and even necessary. Obviously we're going to get there."
advertisement
