Yesterday, as expected, Bigelow Aerospace announced details about its business plan. Some of those details were released in the earlier Aviation Week article, although company founder Robert Bigelow issued for the first time some pricing information: a four-week trip for a “sovereign client”—an astronaut from a national space agency—would cost $14,950,000 (in 2012 dollars), including […]
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Charles Simonyi is now officially the fifth commercial space tourist (or passenger, or whatever—let’s not start that debate again). The Soyuz TMA-10 carrying Simonyi and two Russian cosmonauts lifted off from Baikonur Saturday at 1:31 pm EDT and entered orbit nine minutes later. The Soyuz is scheduled to dock with the ISS on Monday afternoon. […] A Soyuz spacecraft carrying fifth orbital space tourist Charles Simonyi is scheduled to lift off today at 1:31 pm EDT. The launch will be aired on NASA TV and possibly might be picked up by the cable news channels. There is not much news about the launch, expect for the usual coverage about Martha Stewart, […] To follow up on yesterday’s report where the cofounders of a social networking startup announced they were going to travel to the ISS, I received a response to some questions I posed the company from one of the cofounders/would-be space tourists, Cherry Mendoza. According to her, while they would start training in preparation for the […] There was a surprising press release this morning claiming that the two co-founders of an online social networking startup had signed up to fly to the ISS. Cherry Mendoza and Jennifer Bellofatto of HerOrbit.com will start training in Russia in the fall of 2007 for a future unspecified flight or flights to the ISS (the […] A few minor updates about Charles Simonyi’s upcoming trip to the ISS: Simonyi will perform a series of tests for the Japanese space agency JAXA during his stay on the station. He will test several high-definition camcorders currently on the station to see how radiation exposure has degraded the performance of their CCD sensors. Simonyi […] A roundup of a few items going on in the field not associated with the Space Access conference: Charles Simonyi announced that he will speak with high school students in the US from the ISS during his trip to the station, using the amateur radio link on the ISS. The Scotsman reviews a new book […] As Charles Simonyi prepares for his launch to the ISS early next month, SPACE.com reports that he will get a bit of a bonus: He will spend 13 days in space instead of the previously-planned 11, in order to ensure that the the landing of the Soyuz flight at the end of the taxi mission […] Space Adventures announced yesterday that space tourist Charles Simonyi will take a gourmet meal to the ISS next month to share with the crew. The six-course meal includes quail roasted in Madrian wine, duck breast ‘confit’ with capers, shredded chicken parmentier, apple fondant pieces, rice pudding with candied fruit, and semolina cake with dried apricots. […] |
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Simonyi backlash
When Dennis Tito flew six years ago, the question was whether or not a private fare-paying citizen could visit the International Space Station. By last year that controversy had disappeared and had been replaced by more mundane ones: was Anousheh Ansari the first female space tourist or not? So far, Charles Simonyi’s flight to the […]