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Tito In Space
SanLouBlues writes: "This story has the scoop on Dennis Tito in space. He is up there now and will be for the next 6 days "with his video camera and CD player." whee."
trolebus contributes links to coverage on CNN and on Reuters.
It's been a long, strange story -- the optimisic Tito was originally planning on going to Mir, but looks like he got an upgrade. I hope he's savoring this trip for $20 million worth of memories. Don't forget, there is a cheaper version of space tourism on the horizon, too.
3,333,333 $ per day
138,889 $ per hour
2,315 $ per minute
39 $ per second
Look at your bank account balance, and see how much time in space you can afford. :-)
This is just NASA trying to keep their current near monopoly on manned space flight. They have to pretend that only people who work for them are competent to leave the atmosphere.
This actually reminds me of the fuss the Russians raised when Mir went down about leaving only the US with a significant manned space presence. This was dismissed as nationalist propaganda by the western news services that covered it, and they were largely correct, but perhaps there is some nuget of truth in the Russian's fears. Although the ISS is international, I don't think anyone will deny that NASA is the dominant player.
Tito, don't forget to take the towels from the bathroom, empty the complimentary mini-bar and stock up on those little soaps. You paid for them, you deserve them.
Wordnik, a dictionary project which aims to collect
I guess we should let more tourist on Navy submarines as well. They could not possible do any harm there. Err... - ooops.
things. take. time.
Anyone else see the irony in Russia being the first country start doing space tourism? Ahead of America, that bastion of the free market.
More power to the Russians.
Deleted
"...and it has been revealed that Tito was at the controls when the International Space Station collided with a Martian fishing vessel..."
~ radiographite: art by john shepard
Yeah, Yeah, I know he is rich and the Russians are poor etc...
However, I saw a picture of that old man looking like a kid with his first bike and for some reason it made me feel good.
Good for him.
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$20 million dollars.
Something that nobody is really discussing is how this man's life is going to be once he returns. Dennis Tito is going to be everywhere, he may be a millionaire, but he isn't an astronaut. The majority of humanity has more of what it takes to become a millionaire than an astrounaut anyday.
So think about it, the speaking tours, the talk shows, the morning news shows, the endorsements, it will be non-stop. Let's not forget the book deal about his ordeal. I am not saying that he did it for the fame, but he will be able to afford a lot more trips after he gets back.
I am going to open up a history book in ten years and see this man's name.
Just my 2 cents
He's buying a place in the history books, and he's also buying an opportunity to rub NASA's face in their own snobby arrogance concerning who is, and who is not qualified to go up into space.
Yes, space missions are hard, especially the likes we've had in the past. But there's no reason we can't enter a new era where the physical and mental demands on the space traveller aren't much less severe than they've been.
Space tourism is going to be a boon to the industry and Tito is going to demonstrate that.
Actually, Nasa wanted to put a two day delay on it because on Tuesday and Wednesday there were some computers mysteriously going offline, meaning that the shuttle was going to have to be docked for longer than expected. They needed Russian concurrence to actually make that happen. So it's not really the "big bad NASA", it's just that the Russians didn't agree that there would be a scheduling problem with the docking because Tito's capsule isn't supposed to dock at the station until Monday, which _should_ give NASA enough time to fix the problem and free up the docking bay. On the other hand, if that isn't enough time, they can always hang around waiting for NASA to finish work on the computers -- I'm sure Tito won't object to the extra time in space, and Russia would love the exposure this would give to space tourism.
Sure Tito, but what about Michael, Janet and the rest of them? Can't we send them *ALL* into space?
Chaos, Mayhem, and Destruction: Not
The space shuttle budget for 2001 was 3.28 billion dollars. Divide that by the scheduled 7 flights and you get 468 million per flight. Even if you could cram people in without seats or life support, you are talking about ~2 million a person. Unfortunately actually cargo capability of the space shuttle is significantly less because of mass and balance constraints for abort. And people need seats and life support.
The cost of a Soyuz flight is on the order of 6 million. The cost of a Proton flight with similair cargo capabilities to the shuttle is on the order of 10 million. (of course, you can't buy it at that price. However, you can buy them for something on the order of $2000/lb) The nice thing about a Soyuz is you can probably find 3 people who are willing to pay millions of dollars to go into space while it would be much more difficult to find hundreds of people to do the same. In '99 the budget for the Russian space program was $99 million, of which 50-70% was funded.The side note to all of this is the foreign currency reserve situation in Russia. The Russian government prints money and lives with the inflationary consequences. However, undertakings of technical complexity such as the space program require significant outlays of dollars. Tito's flight probably provides all of the foreign currency reserves to operate the Russian space program this year.
Ultimately, however, unique markets such as space tourism will demand unique vehicles. The theory, in some circles, is the elasticity of space tourism will pay for the development of such vehicles. The few people you launch for $20million a pop will finance the development of vehicles to launch thousands for $100k a pop and millions for $10k a pop. Of course only time will tell.
The long term importance of this is that citizen exploration of space has to take place before citizen space settlement. As government has shown no willingness (or reason, or responsibility for the involved risks) for space settlement, this is the most important context of space tourism.
-Jay Thomas
http://www.jay.cxStation Alpha actually *WAS* designed with science in mind, as well as being a stepping stone to future misisons.
Anybody who aruges otherwise simply has no clue what it was designed for to begin with. Contrary to popular belief, Alpha was designed to house several lab modules- from the United States, Japan, Russia, and the ESA to name a few. The fact that they aren't in orbit yet is the only real argument that can be made.
I suppose it never occurs to many that a great many of the research projects in Alpha are related to human physiology, and how it reacts in space. Such as finding how to reduce or eliminate the loss of bone density while in space, microgravity orientation, heart and nervous system changes-
Not to mention the myriad of other technologies that are being put to the test - such as a VR robot that will take the place of a human spacewalk- extension of this technology, when fully developed, will allow remote sugery from anywhere in the world.
Air filtration, water purification, waste removal and disposal- also vital bits of science that Alpha is already experimenting with, and have very clear ramifications on earth- the time is not far off that it will be clean water that is more precious and sought after than oil. Being able to purify water from sewage at low cost is vital. Air filtration is already becoming an important issue in many metropolitan areas.
And, of course, there's launch costs - the single most expensive aspect of spaceflight. Dealing with Alpha requires the development of ever-more inexpensive methods of launching cargo into orbit.
And, lastly- whatever the environmentalists say about saving the Earth doesn't matter; even if all pollution was immediately stopped, mankind would be doomed in a few centuries anyway - humanity simply cannot support itself on the resources of Earth alone. Its population is already considered too large for the earth to support - and the human population is growing rapidply.
I find it unsettling that Slashdotters have the mentality of 'free or die' and 'bad, bad profit-mongers!' and still end up saying "You can't fund such a project unless you can be sure you will make a profit" - This amounts to arguing that the government should fund Microsoft's researchers, then letting Microsoft sell the results of the government sponsored research be sold, with exclusive rights going to MS.
It's a solid fact (US. Treasury statistic) that for each and every dollar spent on the space program - NASA, or otherwise, the government gets over seven dollars' worth of research, and actual worth in return, making the space program the most 'profitable' of anything any government has done.
Station Alpha is about serious work; some is done in space - the majority is done on Earth. There really is nothing political about Alpha, save that NASA has to convince several of the world's governments that it is a worthwhile effort. The fact that NASA launched and built most of the station is one reason why NASA gets so much of a say as to what happens there. Italy, for example, wants to add its own hab/science modules to Alpha - and if/when they do, they get rights to whatever happens in their module. The current state of Alpha is really no different; tito is allowed in the 'international' secions of the station, and not the modules considered 'US Owned.'
NASA's primary concern was always the timescale - it's just too dangerous, espescially with the current computer problems Alpha is having. It's also a rather well-documented case that the Russians have historically been far more cavalier about safety than the US is-- sometimes to the point of recklessness. Much of the conflict is NASA's safety policies clashing with Russia's.
MIR nearly killed its crew a great many times. NASA doesn't want to make the same mistakes, or have the same problems.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
hehe they have to, what region are they in?
hold on comrad we just came over the US, we need to change disks and players back to region one. Sirgi put the player from japan back in the locker......
________
Does anyone actually have a Java program designed to control air traffic, or for the operation of a nuclear facility?
Tito's trip: $20 million
The rocket: $5 million
The look on Dan Goldin's face: priceless!
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"What I want to know is, if Tito is allowed to take his CD player into space, why do I have to turn off my palm pilot during takeoff?
Bryguy
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
The Dennis Tito ISS landing was nothing more than an elaborate hoax! He's resting comfortably in a movie studio in Roswell, NM right now!
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
What really galls me about this whole episode is how NASA tried to put the kibosh on it. This from an organization that allowed itself to be used by Jake Garn and John Glenn for what amounted to space junkets for Senators. If NASA was smart, they'd be selling seats to generate some revenue. But noooooooo, they're too high-minded for that. </rant>
perhaps they would get off their high horse and look for alternate funding as well. The Russians did a heck of a job finding some VC money in a tough market .
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
He's rebuffing that NASA myth that normal people can't fly in space, despite MsMcAuliffe's tragic death. While other people, equally or even less qualified, have already flown, that's the picture the media are sending.
As for the ISS' "serious work", well, one could argue that the main job being done there is politics. That station hasn't been designed with science in mind, nor can it be considered a "stepping stone" for future missions. So...
I agree. However, you can't fund such a project unless you can be sure you will make a profit, that is, people will want to pay and go, but you can't see that before people do pay and go, etc. Bootstrapping the process fits perfectly into the governmental space agencies' missions, IMHO.
It seems to me that the majority of the people that ride the shuttle into space since its inception aren't "real astronauts" in the Right Stuff sense. So what? The only difference between this guy and anyone else that has ridden into space is that he *paid* for his seat and he's there as a tourist and not as a researcher.
So, NASA bitches and moans about how this guy might get in the way because he's not a "trained astronaut." So what? NASA has a well established background of sending non-astronauts into space anyway. Recall the challenger incident? McAuliffe's *only* real purpose of being on that mission was for PR. She was going to teach a few classes to her students from space.
Aw bullshit.
First off, Tito isn't some moron who doesn't knew his ass from a hole in the ground.
Second, comparing this to your electronics course is rediculous; you people were *told* to mess around and push the pretty buttons. It was part of the course. AND, nobody thought pushing a button was going to kill people and cost billions of dollars.
Sheesh.
Now, if you're referring to possible future space tourism, it's just as rediculous. Airplanes have all sorts of potentially dangerous pretty buttons. Do passengers cause crashes? No! They aren't allowed to play in the cockpit. Obviously, before space tourism takes off, the space station or whatever has to be designed with that in mind. A place for pilots and such, and a place for tourists. Simple.
Do you really think that your average joe is so incredibly stupid as to run around a multi-billion dollar craft where he isn't allowed, pushing buttons at random? Do you really think the 'De-orbit' button is some big red thing labeled 'Push Me!'? Come on...
--
Damn it Jim, that's my sphincter, not a jelly donut!!!
There have been a few misguided statements here, so hey-
Astronauts, regardless of NASA's instructions, should have no need to babysit Mr. Tito. Tito was a spaceflight engineer during the salad days of the sixties before turning to business, and has undergone nine months of Russian training. It is possible, of course, that this is insufficient. But NASA's current stand appears to be that no set of qualifications to board the station, other than being a 'professional', exists- a haphazard and arrogant approach that won't serve for an international station. So three years from now, the Italians want to fly a scientist who NASA thinks is underqualified- are we back in the same debacle? Standards would be quite easy to determine.
NASA doesn't have unilateral authority to control who goes on the station. We don't have sole ownership, you see. The rather poorly defined treaty structure and the act of including a cash-strapped, aging Russian space program on the critical path to the station were probably bad ideas- but at any rate, we made the deals; they read 'do such and such, you get so many crew members for so much time.' If we wanted dictatorial control over the thing, we should have build it ourselves. Congress wasn't prepared to pay for that and various parts of the government wanted to make the station a tool of international diplomacy. That's fine- but then you don't get everything you want.
The Russians are giving up a substantial chance to do science and engineering research; the operation of the station isn't expected to be delayed despite being a crewman short, as it were, for months... Doesn't this suggest something? The one objection NASA hasn't been able to raise is that the station is being put to much waste, because the station has so little utility in the first place!
The sad truth is that the station is a debacle, a plan first drafted in the early 1980's that has gotten progressively less and less useful ever since. We've built an enormous, expensive platform to conduct rather vaguely defined research that could have been accomplished much more easily in any number of ways- because the goal, really, that NASA set themselves was to build a station, regardless of what use it was. To my mind, low-earth-orbit station building and tourist launches are essentially ready to be a commercial enterprise; but the entire space industry is tied up in a NASA-oriented mindset, and alternative ventures can't find the capital to get off the ground, as it were. NASA's role for the US isn't control-of-all-activities-in-space; it's groundbreaking research to enable the use of space by others.
One might add that space flights have been sold to civilians previously, by both NASA and the Soviets, John Glenn being only the most recent example; up until Sharon Christa McAuliffe and Challenger, it was an almost common practice. [And understand, I mean to cast no aspersions whatsoever on her memory.] It's just that they were sold for political influence or publicity or other such prices, and so could be semi-concealed.
Enough rant already. For more along these lines, visit the Space Frontier Foundation. I don't always agree with the SFF- I think they have too much faith in the virtues of capitalism- but they understand very well which businesses NASA should and shouldn't be in.