Victoria Gilman
National Geographic News
National Geographic News
August 10, 2005
Working with Russian space officials, a private firm plans to sell a flyby trip to the moon. Price per passenger: 100 million dollars (U.S.).
If the plan takes off, two space tourists and their pilot would spend 10 to 21 days crammed in a passenger car-size Soyuz space module.
Space Adventures, based in Arlington, Virginia, today announced their agreement with the Russian Aviation and Space Agency for a lunar look-see—the latest, most ambitious trip offered to private space tourists.
Organizers say the trip could launch in three to four years.
Citizen astronauts able and willing to cover the sky-high cost of the spaceflight would first have to undergo six to eight months of extensive training and mission preparation.
"This is an expedition, not a trip to the beach," said Space Adventures chief executive Eric Anderson. "Sure they're private citizens. But they're also explorers, like the people who first climbed Mount Everest."
In addition to learning how to control the Soyuz module, the space tourists would train for a host of tasks said to advance science and space knowledge.
Duties might include conducting onboard experiments, taking digital images, and collecting data on space phenomena, according to Anderson.
After the training period, the "crew" would take off from Kazakhstan aboard a Russian-designed Soyuz rocket.
Soviet engineers designed the Soyuz in the 1960s for unmanned missions to the moon. The craft has since been modified to send cosmonauts to the various Russian space stations.
"The Russian vehicles are fairly small," noted John Spencer, founder and president of the Space Tourism Society, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that seeks to boost private space travel.
