The first non-professional in space was to be American Sharon Christ McAuliffe. She won the contest “Teacher in Space” and joined the crew of the shuttle Challenger in 1986. However, McAuliffe was not destined to become the first space tourist: the shuttle’s external fuel tank exploded at 73 seconds into the flight, destroying the ship and killing the entire crew.
The first successful space tourist flight took place in 2001. Then the American Dennis Tito flew to the ISS for a week for $20 million. The next year, the Russian Soyuz spacecraft delivered another tourist to the ISS – a South American millionaire Mark Shuttleworth.
“The travel agent in both cases was a company that sends private individuals to space, who finance the flight with their own funds – Space Adventures.
A pioneer of space tourism
9In all, seven people have been to space under the space tourism program. One of them, the American Charles Simonyi, has even been there twice.
The next Crew Dragon tour flight to space is scheduled for October 2021. The price of the trip is $55 million per person. The trip is made possible by the opening of a SpaceX section on the International Space Station. A new player in the space tourism market, startup Axiom Space, will be responsible for the logistics of the trip for private citizens. Tourists will spend a total of two days in transit and eight days aboard with astronauts who work on the orbiting station.
NASA Tourist Flights.
In mid-2019, NASA announced the opening of its section on the International Space Station for tourism and other business activities. NASA plans to send tourists to the ISS for $58 million, $3 million above Axiom Space’s price tag.
According to Robin Gates, deputy director of the ISS, there will be up to two short private missions per year. Private astronauts will be allowed to stay on the ISS for up to 30 days, traveling on U.S. spacecraft Crew Dragon and, and CST-100 Starliner. The first ship has already been certified by NASA and became the first commercial spaceliner with a license. Tests of the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft from Boeing are delayed.
For the upcoming mission, however, the non-professionals – a billionaire, a health care provider and a randomly selected lucky man – NASA will only provide the spaceport. SpaceX will be responsible for selecting the astronauts, outfitting them and training them. The launch is scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2021.
Flights to and near the moon
Space Adventures is also offering a near-lunar mission. It will use flight-proven Russian spacecraft. Two individuals and one professional cosmonaut are planned to fly on a free trajectory around the back side of the moon. They will be several hundred kilometers from its surface. Any tourist who chooses to join the near-lunar mission will see the illuminated far side of the satellite and then witness an Earthrise rising above the surface of the moon.
By the end of 2021, Space Adventures plans to send two tourists to the ISS on Russia’s Soyuz MS spacecraft. In 2023, Space Adventures and RSC Energia will also send two cosmonauts to the ISS. During the expedition, one of the spaceflight participants, together with a professional Russian cosmonaut, will make a spacewalk, according to a Roscosmos press release. It is planned that the space tourist will enter outer space for 90-100 minutes, which corresponds to one revolution around the Earth.
Training for such a space flight will last several weeks at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City. Preparation for a spacewalk involves learning how an Orlan space suit works and how a spacewalk is conducted. The best place to simulate outer space is in an underwater environment, so much of the training will take place in the floating complex at Star City, where a full-size mockup of the ISS modules is submerged. Each step of the process of entering and exiting the space station in an Orlan space suit is carefully rehearsed. The stay in space will last about two weeks to allow time for preparation and spacewalking.
Millarader Yusaku Maezawa is also planning a flight around the Moon in 2023. Earlier, the businessman bought all the seats on the SpaceX Starship for the first flight around the Moon and invited everyone to apply for the selection on his Twitter account. The goal of the dearMoon project is to allow a few talented people to fly around the moon for free, which Miezawa envisions should inspire them to create new works of art.
In addition to Space Adventures, Virgin Galactic (owned by Richard Branson) and Blue Origin (owned by Jeff Bezos) have plans for the space tourism market. In 2019, NASA selected Blue Origin and ten other companies to produce prototype spacecraft for the moon landing.