Sun, Jun 09, 2019 page16

• NASA planning to open International Space Station to tourists

  Part of the policy change includes opening parts of the space station to private companies so that they can develop techniques for building materials, such as fiber optic cables, the quality of which is outstanding when manufactured in microgravity

  • AFP, NEW YORK
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  NASA on Friday said it would open up the International Space Station (ISS) to business ventures including space tourism, as it seeks to financially disengage from the orbiting research lab.

  The price tag? Tens of millions of US dollars for a round trip ticket and US$35,000 a night.

  “NASA is opening the International Space Station to commercial opportunities and marketing these opportunities as we’ve never done before,” NASA chief financial officer Jeff DeWit said in an announcement made at the NASDAQ stock exchange in New York.

  

  NASA chief financial officer Jeff DeWit annnounces that the International Space Station will be open for private citizens during a news conference at the NASDAQ in New York on Friday.

  Photo: AP

  There would be up to two short private astronaut missions per year, ISS deputy director Robyn Gatens said.

  The missions would be for stays of up to 30 days. As many as a dozen private astronauts could visit the ISS per year, NASA said.

  These travelers would be ferried to the orbiter exclusively by the two US companies developing transport vehicles for NASA: Space Exploration Technologies Corp, commonly known as SpaceX, with its Crew Dragon capsule, and Boeing Co, which is building one called Starliner.

  These companies would choose the clients — who would not have to be US citizens — and bill for the trip to the ISS, which would be the most expensive part of the adventure: about US$58 million for a round-trip ticket.

  That is the average rate the companies would bill NASA for taking the space adventurers up to the ISS.

  Neither Dragon nor Starliner are ready. Their transport capsules are supposed to be ready near the end of this year, but the timetable depends on the results of a series of tests, so the private missions would have to wait until next year at the earliest.

  The tourists would pay NASA for food and water, as well as their use of the station and the life support system, which would cost about US$35,000 per night per astronaut, DeWit said.

  That does not include Internet usage, which would cost US$50 per gigabyte.

  The space station does not belong to NASA. It was built with Russia starting in 1998, and other countries participate in the mission and send up astronauts, but the US has paid for and controls most of the modules that make it up.

  The new space tourists to the ISS would not be the first: US businessman Dennis Tito had that honor in 2001. He paid Russia about US$20 million for the trip.

  Others followed in his footsteps, the last being Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte in 2009.

  Since 2011, Russian Soyuz rockets have been the only way to get to the space station, and they have transported only space agency astronauts, as well as Russian cosmonauts.

  There are usually three to six crew members on the ISS at any given time. Right now it is home to three Americans, two Russians and a Canadian.

  Russia plans to resume tourist flights in late 2021.

  The policy change announced on Friday includes the opening of parts of the ISS to private sector companies for commercial and marketing activity.

  This would include start-ups developing techniques for building materials in conditions of weightlessness.

  Fiber optic cables, for example, are of extraordinary quality when manufactured in microgravity.

  The idea is to develop the space economy in the hope of seeing the private sector take over the ISS, which the US hopes to stop financing near the end of next year.

  “We want to be there as a tenant, not as the landlord,” NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said in April.

  The agency wants to free up funds for a return to the moon mission called Artemis in 2024 and for sending the first humans to Mars, perhaps in the 2030s, but it remains unclear if commercial activity in Earth’s orbit is profitable, because it is still so expensive to get up there in the first place.

  In the end, NASA appears to have changed its stance to meet its huge budget needs.

  When Russia announced it was taking Tito to the space station, NASA was at first opposed to such a mission and ended up sending the Russians a bill for his stay on the ISS.
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