CSI and Space Adventures sign ISS cargo agreement

One of the problems tourists visiting the ISS face today is that there is very little cargo capacity available in the Soyuz spacecraft used to ferry people to and from the station. To help potentially alleviate that problem, Constellation Services International (CSI) announced Thursday that it has signed an agreement with Space Adventures to allow […]

The radiation risk to space tourists

SPACE.com reports on a little-discussed safety risk for future space tourists: exposure to space radiation on their flights. That’s less of a concern for suborbital spaceflights, where passengers spend only a few minutes above the protection of the atmosphere, than for future orbital or extraorbital excursions. The need for monitoring space weather conditions by future […]

An intriguing figure

A Space Adventures press release today marking the fifth anniversary of Dennis Tito’s flight to the ISS claims that the company’s “efforts in offering commercial seats to the public have resulted in $120 million (USD) worth of orbital spaceflight sales.” The company has so far flown or signed up five people—Tito, Mark Shuttleworth, Greg Olsen, […]

Happy fifth anniversary, Dennis Tito!

Today marks the fifth anniversary of the launch of the “first” commercial space tourist, Dennis Tito, on a Soyuz taxi flight to the ISS. (There are other “tourists” who flew in space before Tito, ranging from Helen Sharman to the politicians who got rides on the shuttle; Tito, at least, is the first tourist who […]

Brief Saturday Space Access overview

As before, here’s a brief summary of some highlights of the Space Access ’06 sessions on Saturday relevant to space tourism:

You might remember the February 2005 announcement of the Personal Spaceflight Federation, a new industry group created to support the emerging space tourism industry. However, after that initial announcement, there was no other visible […]

Orbital space tourism survey

SpaceWorks Engineering, Inc. (SEI) has posted an online survey regarding demand for orbital space tourism. Normally I am skeptical of any such online surveys, because the audience is self-selected: rather than a random sampling that takes into account various demographic factors of the audience (as is the case with traditional polling) online surveys can be […]

An ultralight approach to orbital space tourism

In an article in this week’s issue of The Space Review, Richard Speck of Micro-Space Inc. proposed a radical approach to human orbital spaceflight: to keep launch costs low, make the spacecraft as simple and as lightweight as possible. He proposes a spacecraft that is little more than a spacesuited astronaut strapped into a heat […]

A space tourism technothriller

In this week’s issue of The Space Review, Tom Hill reviews a new novel, Orbit, that may be one of the first thrillers associated with space tourism. In the John J. Nance novel, tourist Kip Dawson is trapped in orbit when his spacecraft is apparently struck by a micrometeorite, killing the pilot. Will Dawson get […]

A Virgin-Bigelow hookup?

Virgin Galactic has been in discussions with Bigelow Aerospace about the possible development of space hotels using Bigelow’s inflatable module technology, according to an article in Hotel Magazine. Richard Branson said in Dubai last week that Virgin Galactic is considering using Bigelow’s modules and unspecified space transportation systems to develop an orbital hotel:

We are […]

Simonyi: “I’m sure I can make myself useful”

The Seattle Times scores an interview with Charles Simonyi, the former Microsoft developer who signed a contract yesterday to fly to the ISS as a space tourist. While some people might be content to float around in weightlessness and spend the day looking out the window, Simonyi wants to play a more active role on […]

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