This
story was updated at 12:35 p.m. EDT.
It may be
the pinnacle of travel perks, but the only firm arranging private trips to the
International Space Station (ISS) is now offering a bonus spacewalk for clients
willing to pay for more than a standard $20 million trip.
The Vienna,
Virginia-based firm Space Adventures announced Friday that future paying
visitors the space station can take a 90-minute spacewalk, or extravehicular
activity (EVA) and extend their orbital trip by up to eight days for an added
cost of about $15 million.
"It's a
logical extension," Eric Anderson, Space Adventures' president and CEO, said of
the spacewalk availability in a telephone interview. "It's one of the perhaps premier
experiences of spaceflight."
Under the
plan, paying spacewalkers would don a Russian-built Orlan spacesuit,
exit a Russian-built airlock and be accompanied by a Federal Space Agency
cosmonaut during a spacewalk, Space Adventures spokesperson Stacey Tearne told SPACE.com.
At all times the spacewalkers would be tethered to the ISS, she added.
Space
Adventures has brokered deals with Russia's space agency to launch three space
tourists - or spaceflight participants - to the ISS since 2001, when U.S.
entrepreneur Dennis Tito rode a
Soyuz spacecraft to the orbital laboratory. South African businessman Mark
Shuttleworth followed in 2002, with American
scientist-turned-entrepreneur Gregory
Olsen reaching the ISS in 2005.
Japanese
businessman Daisuke
Enomoto is now set to become the fourth paying visitor to the ISS no
earlier than Sept. 14, when he launches toward the station with Expedition
14 astronauts Michael Lopez-Alegria and Mikhail Tyurin.
Like his
predecessors, Enomoto is set to spend 10 days in space, eight of them aboard
the ISS, as part of his $20 million deal with Space Adventures and the Federal
Space Agency. U.S. entrepreneur and renowned spaceflight supporter Anousheh
Ansari, of Texas, is Enomoto's backup.
But Enomoto
will not walk in space during his flight because of the additional training
needed, Tearne said. An extra month - or about 190 hours - on top of the
typical six-month training would be required for spacewalking client, she
added.
Meanwhile,
NASA officials said they had yet to be notified about any plan by its
international partners to sell spacewalk experiences.
"We have not yet been informed by any of our partners about an intention to
sell spacewalks," NASA spokesperson Melissa Mathews told SPACE.com,
adding that the agency does have processes in place to review ISS crew assignments
and spacewalk safety.
Anderson
said Space Adventures has spent between one and two years studying the
feasibility of a spaceflight participant spacewalk.
"They would
just go right out the airlock and they would stay pretty close," Anderson said
of prospective paying spacewalkers. "They would just look around and enjoy it;
it's not something that involves an incredible amount of risk. They're going
out and they're coming back in after an hour an a half."
Russian
space officials said they have completed an in-depth study of the risks
involved with a space tourist-staged spacewalk.
"At the
conclusion of our internal feasibility assessments and after careful
consideration, we have come to the conclusion that subject to the personal
physical and psychological capabilities and with the completion of additional
specific cosmonaut training, spaceflight participants could potentially perform
an EVA," Russia's Alexei Krasnov, director of manned spaceflight for the
Federal Space Agency, said in a statement.
Accomplished
professional spacewalkers said that at the basic level, there is no major
obstacle between a space tourist and a 90-minute jaunt outside the ISS.
"There is
risk involved in going outside, but if you're going to sign up for that and
accept the risk, that's fine," three-time spacewalker and former NASA astronaut
Tom Jones told SPACE.com. "I think it is an incomparable personal experience."
Jones, who
authored the book Skywalking to document his spaceflight career and
serves as an astronaut advisor for Space Adventures, added that as long as
space tourists have the finances, training and physical fitness to stage a
spacewalk, few hurdles remain to marvel at the Earth and space from inside a
spacesuit.
During a
90-minute EVA, which is the time it takes the ISS to make one complete orbit
around Earth, a spacewalker would experience orbital sunrise and sunset, Jones
said.
"That 90
minutes is like gold to a real spacewalkers," Jones said. "I got a total of
five or 10 minutes of doing that in my 19 hours in terms of just unstructured
time, so it's literally that precious an experience."
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