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from the to-infinity-and-beyond,maybe dept.
SpaceX announces partnership to send four tourists into deep orbit:
SpaceX announced a new partnership Tuesday to send four tourists deeper into orbit than any private citizen before them, in a mission that could take place by 2022 and easily cost more than $100 million.
The company signed the deal with Space Adventures, which is based in Washington and served as an intermediary to send eight space tourists to the International Space Station (ISS) via Russian Soyuz rockets.
The first of these was Dennis Tito, who paid $20 million for an eight hour stay on the ISS back in 2001. The last to go was Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte, in 2009.
The new tourists would be carried on SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule, which was developed to transport NASA astronauts and is due to make its first crewed flight in the coming months.
"Our goal is to try to get to about two to three times the height of the space station," Space Adventure's president Tom Shelley told AFP.
The ISS orbits at 400 kilometers (250 miles) above Earth's surface, but the exact altitude of the Space Adventures mission would be determined by SpaceX, added Shelley.
At its earliest, it could take place by late 2021, though "probably more likely is sometime in 2022," he said.
The capsule was designed to take astronauts from the surface to the ISS. Just nine square meters in volume[sic], there are no private areas to sleep wash or use the bathroom.
Mission duration will depend on what the customers want, said Shelley.
Space Adventures has posted its official announcement on its website.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday February 19 2020, @03:59PM
>Bigelow's big plans for inflatable hotels haven't gone anywhere.
Where would they go? Last I heard they're still waiting for rockets big enough to launch their production model B330 (though... I think Falcon Heavy might be just capable)
>They haven't sent any more modules to the ISS.
Why would they? The current BEAM module is a long-term proof-of-concept module that's doubling as a storage closet. Not any point in sending up anything else until NASA or one of the other space agencies involved is prepared to purchase a B330 to add useful capacity to the ISS
Given the resounding success of the BEAM, I'm rather surprised that NASA would select some unproven startup to expand the ISS with more metal cans, rather than at least including a Bigelow module in the plan. I'm wondering if there's some political maneuvering or other non-technical reasoning behind that decision.
On the other hand, last I heard Bigelow was still planning to launch their own independent commercial space station within the next few years. Perhaps with those plans in place, they just weren't feeling "cooperative" enough to play ball with NASA as well.
Hmm, or perhaps NASA is intentionally positioning themselves as a proving ground to foster commercial development in the space station market. With Bigelow having a business plan and proven technology for large-volume habitation and work modules, fostering another company specializing in more traditional hard modules could be a smart move - there's lots of more complicated systems that aren't well suited to direct integration into inflatable modules. And assuming both companies are designing to the ISS's standard for linking modules, you should be able to mix-and-match Bigelow and Axiom modules as desired for future space stations.