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First 'Space Tourist' To Bring Money Back To Mir
Mugwamp writes: "An American man will soon become the first "space tourist" by paying $20 million to get one week aboard Mir. This will most likely become part of a growing trend, at least in the Soviet Union as Mir is funded by a private company rather than the government and needs money desperately to keep the station running.
Additionally, in the same story is an interesting bit about how Mir will start hosting an "Internet portal" that will allow people to access cameras mounted on the tin can...er, I mean space station.
Story courtesy of BBC News." That is an expensive vacation, but no crowds.
Someone's taking a hint from Prince Sultan Salman Al-Saud who bought a space shuttle ride in '88.
what a waste of fucking money.
wanna help the poor?
no.
wanna see the world?
no.
So what do you wanna do with your money?
I wanna spend my week in a SHITTY DANK CRAMPED OLD SPACE STATION, HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF MILES AWAY FROM ANYTHING!
Well, FUCK ME, where do I sign up?!?!?
10. zero-g vomiting is a must.
9. that low-pressure scene at the end of Total Recall looks fun... maybe I could fiddle with the airlock.
8. save all the used food tubes and make some zero-g cheese.
7. tape record my snoring.
6. propel myself about the cabin with a water weenie.
5. try to stick pencils in the ceiling.
4. Play lots of UT.
3. import encryption software from the US.
2. troll Slashdot heavily.
1. Atomized Dubage.
:)Fudboy
:)Fudboy
I guess I'm only a Fudboy, looking for that real Transmeta
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Here's my mirror
The article doesn't seem to say anything about what the tourist will be doing up on Mir. Will he actually be doing the work that a normal cosmonaut would do, or will he just be sitting around... er, floating around for a week watching the other two do stuff?
Even if he does do some work, exactly how important can it be, given that he his expertise is in investing, and he's only going to be up there for a week. Now, if I were paying $20 mil to go up there, I'd want to do something important. I'd want to stay up there for months and help in the construction of the next space station, or help in the construction of a moon surface habitat. Something so after it was over I could look back and say "Damn, I did something up there"; just experiencing zero g for seven days just wouldn't cut it.
Give a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day, but set him on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
I wonder if it's the same guy who offered Britney Spears $12M to sleep with him. She rejected the offer thoug. ;(
da w00t.
da w00t. mtfnpy?
Actually, it's probably the only "team building" that would require teamwork to succeed -- somehow I doubt that a disorganized group could last more than a day or two in micro-gravity!
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We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex—but Congress can. – Cullen Hightower
Mr Manber said: "We have great plans for Mir besides the guest cosmonauts. It will be an internet portal. From a website you will be able
to look out of Mir's windows and watch the Earth drift by."
So, when's the IPO?
Or $62500 kilometer for those of us who have a sane measurement system. $62.50, a meter and $0.625 a centemeter. (All you Americans are turning green with envy at my metric poweress... Bwa ha ha ha.)
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63 cents a centemeter!?!? I wouldn't want to be the first man to ride an elevator at that price!?!?
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There are plenty of people like that on Earth. Although they tend not to be the same people who have $20 million to spend on a trip to space.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Whereas you Americans kept saying, yes...ooh, but WAIT TILL YOU SEE OUR SPACE STATION, it's gunna be great! Well you finally launched the first module 5 years after was originally promised (Mr. Reagan said in 1984 that America was going to have a spacestation in ten years time). And it had to be turned it into the International Space Station because you didn't get enough money from the politicians.
I think it is just an example of how sore losers Americans are. They expect to be the winners and if someone else beats them they try to put the other guys acheivement down. I once saw an athletics event on TV when I was in the States and the best American got the silver medal, he was treated by the commentators as the winner and the guy who won the gold medal was completely ignored.
Don't get me wrong, I don't blame you for having a winner's mentality (I wish my own country had it more) but why do you need to dis everyone else's acheivements to feel better, especially because you already acheive so much yourselves?
10. Bring a few good books
9. Bring a good sock
8. Hassle the concierge relentlessly
7. Scratch your initials on one of the windows
6. Flip all the switches you can find
5. Commit suicide
4. Videotape your pranks on the sleeping astronauts and then sell them in an infomercial
3. Piss everyone off with your incessant comparisons to Holiday Inn.
2. Assume the personality of Boris Yeltsin and pretend to be drunk the entire time
1. Drop a few hits and enjoy the view
no sig.
You said:
Even if he does do some work, exactly how important can it be, given that he his expertise is in investing, and he's only going to be up there for a week.
In the article it says:
"The president of MirCorp, the commercial company that now operates Mir, told BBC News Online that the businessman is Dennis Tito, 59, a former scientist at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory."
He's a former scientist at JPL so investing is probably not his only field of expertise.
But what about huge number of russian geeks that hate his guts? Some of them will find a way to blow up the station ;-)
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Short term destination for rich tourists? Instantly running through my head:
"A three hour tour..."
On a serious note, it is a good space station. America used to have a space station. It had a problem with a solar panel the day it launched. Where is it now? Lessee, I think it crashed either in Australia or somewhere in the Indian Ocean. Mir, on the other hand, is still up there, still hosting missions, and now even generating a little income. So what exactly are we making fun of?
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grappler
Vidi, Vici, Veni
If you work in the number of centimeters the tourist would move while in orbit (relative to his surface launch point), the price per centimeter becomes MUCH more reasonable.
[
I had always thought it was an urban legend, but the Sea ttle Times and other sites briefly mention singer John Denver's attempt to do the same thing in the early 1990s. He was quite the space fan.
From SPACEVIEWS UPDATE, 1997:
As I recall, he asked NASA, who refused him. Not to be spurned, he then asked the Soviets in the same year, which didn't go over too well with American patriots. The jokes were talking about a real "Rocky Mountain High."
[
The amateur station aboard Mir (R0MIR) has been transmitting Slow-Scan Television (SSTV) for the past 6 months or so. Check out the following links for some great images received from the station (the second link includes a lot of links to other archives of Mir SSTV images):
http://www.qsl.net/wb8erj/mir-pix.htm
http://home.t-online.de/home/mrensen/m ir.htm
The cool thing about SSTV from Mir is that it is largely controlled by the station operators aboard , and is much more dynamic content-wise than stuff like weather satellites and stuff. They occasionally turn the camera on themselves, visiting shuttles, etc. Check it out, it's neat stuff. It is also fairly easy to receive and decode SSTV transmission using a soundcard, some freeware code and a radio capable of receiving the 2-meter amateur band. The following link has lots of info on SSTV (aside from the blink tags):
http://www.mbnet.mb.ca/~rraimb/
cvoid - satellites are cool
I'll admit that why one person might pay $20M to spend a little while in Mir isn't entirely clear to me. But two people paying $40M would make perfect sense!
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Xenu loves you!
I wonder what it would cost to just, you know, go there on your own? How much is rental on the SR-71 these days? *wink wink*
Eh...