Russia Unveils Space Shuttle for Tourists

joestump98 writes: "Yahoo! News is running a story about those crazy, cash strapped, Russians building a space shuttle for tourists. For under $100,000 you can take a one-hour flight that includes a mere 3 minutes of weightlessness. Apparently the flights are to start around 2004/2005." 21mhz adds a link to this press release from Russia's Myasishchev Design Bureau, writing: "On close examination, it turns out to be a downscaled version of Buran."

Comments

Expansive for what you get

[SomethingOrOther]

For under $100,000 you can take a one-hour flight that includes a mere 3 minutes of weightlessness

If its weightlessnes you are after, wouldn't it be a damn sight cheeper just to put a plane into a dive and float arround for a bit..... as in an astronoughts training.
(The plane is in free-fall.... Exacly the same effect as being in orbit)

What do you get for your monney other than going on a plane that goes very high (tm) ?

Not a mini-me Buran, more a carbon-copy X-20

[henley]

21mhz adds a link to this press release from Russia's Myasishchev Design Bureau, writing: "On close examination, it turns out to be a downscaled version of Buran."

Hmmm. Not so much Buran (AKA Shuttleski; the two vehicles look remarkably similar), but it is the spitting image of the X-20 Dynasoar (designed and almost-built in the '60s by the USAF). Pretty Pictures Here.

There's no reason to suppose copying. Both vehicles are built for approximately the same mission, so it's more concurrent evolution.

Space flight ? hype.

[dostick]

65 miles up?
Thats not a space flight. It's just a high altitude plane flight.
They do such flights when they shoot movies about space stuff and need zero gravity.
And you dont need specially built spaceship to have 3 minutes of zero gravity. High atitude place will go.

If that was a REAL space flight then it should have at least one time orbit around the earth and that would be much more than 3 minutes of zero gravity.

Buran in Gorky Park

[orin]

For those that visit Moscow, in Gorky Park, by the river is the shell of a Buran Shuttle. Entry is only a few US dollars - and it includes a rather dodgy multimedia presentation on space flight. The intersting thing for me when visiting was that, even when you get to Gorky Park, the thing isn't really advertised. I ended up taking the ferris wheel so I could look over the park layout to find this shuttle that I'd read about in my Lonely Planet guide. Russia apparently built 5 Burans, only one of which did an unmanned orbital flight. I'm not sure if the one in Gorky Park is that one. Makes you wonder where the others are and if anything will be done with them besides stripping them down and turning them into a rotting tourist attraction in Moscow.

Here is a picture I found on the web:

http://aeroweb.lucia.it/~agretch/Buran/gpk94ag_bur an2.jpg

It will be interesting to see where this Space Tourist venture goes. If it can pay for itself (and one would assume it could as it is hard to believe that anybody could afford to run it at a loss) it might turn out that the Russian space industry will get a good head start in the space tourism industry.

Re:Three minutes of weightlessness

[Ice Tiger]

The microgravity scenes for Apollo 13 were filmed in microgravity aboard a set built in a plane flying ballistic trajectories.

It's time for commercialization

[Anonymous Coward]

If five millionaires can fund the entire Russian space program and turn it into a going commercial concern, then more power to them. NASA has done a good job of spending billions of dollars of taxpayer's money and to what avail? Pure research is in my opinion very justifiable and definitely in the realm of government funding.

But in their zeal to "own" space - a typical beaurocratic tendency - NASA has attempted to control what really is now applied engineering; the shuttle program is now NOT research, it's the things they do with it that are. Building a Space Station is NOT research, it's the experiments that are.

Therefore, the Russians have done a marvellous job of opening the awareness of the entire world to a tectonic shift in thinking; that the flights should now be commercial.

Government can still do research aboard specially constructed craft and by contracting for fares aboard commercial ships.

It's now time to stop the whining by the people on this board who believe the crap they are being fed by NASA about "safety" and other garbage. If ageing John Glenn can fly as a publicity stunt, so can a fit engineer as a tourist who is funding a significant part of an entire country's space effort and good on him.

Safety is relative. You can white-water raft down the Colorado river and die pretty easily, there are risks in many sports. There's risk in flying spaceships too, but that will not deter someone who really wants to go. If the tourist endangers the mission, then either the mission or the ship were badly designed.

All the negative posts are clearly, in the eyes of onlookers, just sour grapes and ignorance.

And congratulations to the Russians who deserve tremendous credit for taking this bold step - just like they did as first to put up a satellite, a man in space, and a woman in space.

Re:Crisscross?

[red5]

cool let's move to russia, i'm sure our quality of life will improve 10 fold. dumbass. it would be nice if YOU moved there.

Fitting that you post as Anonymous Coward. You've definitely earned the second part of that name. First sugesting that I run from the problem and then saying that you'd rather bury you head in the sand.
I'm sorry I don't run from my problems and if don't like me speaking out about it, tough.
I've still got the First Amendment. Or at least most of it.