"We can't force the timeline. It will happen when it happens":
More than two decades have come and gone since entrepreneur Dennis Tito became the first person to pay for his own ride into space, spending a week on the International Space Station.
After that pioneering mission aboard a Soyuz vehicle, Tito said he always had a desire to return to space, with a preference for flying to the Moon. But this thought remained mostly dormant, because Tito did not have confidence in any of the available spaceflight vehicles for such a mission.
That changed about a year and a half ago when he and his wife, Akiko Tito, visited SpaceX's headquarters in Hawthorne, California. After a tour, they discussed possible space tourism trips, and it did not take long for the lunar idea to come up. Would Tito be interested in riding aboard SpaceX's Starship vehicle for a flight around the Moon?
[...] "I said yes, I want to go," Akiko Tito added. "We both wanted to go."
The Titos announced Wednesday that they purchased two of a dozen seats on the second of SpaceX's planned circumlunar flights later this decade. With the public announcement, Akiko Tito becomes the first woman confirmed to fly on Starship. The flight will last about a week, outbound to the Moon, passing within about 40 km of the surface and flying back. Ten other seats on Starship remain unsold and are available. Tito said he was not at liberty to disclose the price he paid.
[...] Given the amount of development work ahead of it, Starship is unlikely to be ready for crewed circumlunar trips before 2025, and that date probably will slip later into the decade. "My personal timeframe is that we're willing to wait for as long as we're healthy," Tito said. "We can't force the timeline. It will happen when it happens."
[...] After Tito's first trip to space in April 2001, six other people launched on a Soyuz through 2009, for $20 million to $30 million a trip. Then, for a decade, there was no space tourism at all. Tito said he had hoped the private spaceflight industry would blossom, with the price of an orbital trip coming down to $1 million per person.
"It dried up and nothing happened," Tito said. "I thought there would be hundreds of people going into space. It was kind of disappointing. Now all of a sudden with the development of reusability, I think it's finally happening. We're just excited as can be."
(Score: 2, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Thursday October 13 2022, @08:30PM (3 children)
I'm going to start a gofundme to pay for a ticket. I promise to post here on SN every day of the trip, and describe everything extensively.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 4, Funny) by takyon on Thursday October 13 2022, @08:37PM
Don't bother. Billionaire beta testers will pay out the ass for the 2025-2028 timeframe, but it will be cheap later. You may or may not live to see it.
Maybe there will be a fire sale on New Shepard suboptimal rollercoaster tickets following the recent rocket failure. You would only have to live blog for a few minutes.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Funny) by crm114 on Thursday October 13 2022, @09:37PM
This is SN, so I want ASCII-Art pictures included in your extensive descriptions!
:)
(Score: 4, Funny) by istartedi on Thursday October 13 2022, @09:44PM
It might also help if you changed your name to Alice. "One of these days..."
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2022, @09:43PM (3 children)
Let me trickle down at you from space!
(Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Thursday October 13 2022, @11:11PM (2 children)
That poses a physics question.
You're in orbit - let's say geosynchronous orbit. You're on a space walk, or crawl, or run, depending on your experience and agility. You have to urinate. So, you empty your bladder into your space suit's bladder. You decide to piss on earth, and vent your space suit's bladder in earth's general direction.
How much of that urine will ever reach earth?
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by crm114 on Saturday October 15 2022, @06:56PM (1 child)
Being a liquid, it will freeze into ice.
It will enter the atmosphere, probably fast enough to re-liquidfy. Once the Atmosphere slows it down, it will re-crystalize.
Yellow Snow!
(Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Saturday October 15 2022, @07:41PM
OK, that's all plausible. But, what about sublimation?
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday October 14 2022, @11:40AM
... the next one which came up was a rescue mission.
ps: looking forwards to KSP2.
(Score: 1) by AlwaysNever on Saturday October 15 2022, @08:39PM
I love it when rich people lecture the masses on ecology and saving energy, and then they go buy tickets for a pleasure flight to the Moon.