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Third Space Tourist is Set
Sgt York writes "Space Adventures announced yesterday that Gregory Olsen will be their next private space tourism client. He paid $20M to hop on a Soyuz, sometime by 2005, and go spend some time on the ISS. The cool thing is, he's not just playing tourist. He's the CEO of Sensors Unlimited, has a MS in physics, and a PhD in materials science. He's planning on using the trip to 'help inspire today's youth to dream big' and conduct a few experiments, including testing out some of his company's equipment. SA is billing him as his own 'private space program.'" There's also a space.com story.
At least he's not part of a boy band.
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
In other words, it'll be a tax deduction because it's a "business expense".
He's planning on using the trip to 'help inspire today's youth to dream big' and conduct a few experiments, including testing out some of his company's equipment.
Business trip, be sure to keep the receipts. Oh, and he'll be entertaining a client for dinner when he gets to the space station, so his meal will be a write-off, too.
Hmmm... how many cents per mile is it for a space commute?
Guy: hey, baby, what's up?
....
Hot chick: get lost, loser, unless you got something interesting to say!
Guy: I'm going into space next month, gonna cost me $20 mil. I might not come back alive. Look, here's the clipping from the New York Times with my photo. So, want to come for a ride in my Porsche? I got a little time left and a lot of money to burn...
I reckon it'd be worth 2-3 months of one-nighters with exceedingly pretty but easily charmed women. In purely genetic terms, that $20m could be a pretty good investment.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
The more the merrier though. In a theoretical capital market, if there are enough buyers, the producers will make more, enabling more people to buy, and maximizing profit. It's newsworthy in that it's another step closer to non-government sponsored space flight. Personal space travel will come eventually, but maybe market forces can accelerate the process.
Just because I doubt myself does not mean I find your position compelling.
Rockets by SpaceX and others are all well and good, but not even Bill Gates has the cash to fully fund a competent space program. Assume private enterprise could and did, would it be any better than what's happening these days?
"Did you remember to close the door?" "Didn't need to, it fell off and drifted away."
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Oh come on. It could also happen so that he'll train, get on a rocket, and get blown into fine red mist... Without this article, it wouldn't be possible to link back to this on the article telling about the accident. It may seem pointless now, but so do most precautionary things...
If the $20 mil isn't getting him any action, I doubt the expensive vacation is going to help.
Guy: My penis has been in outer space. Wanna touch it?
Hot chick (while spraying mace): Eww! I thought this place had a lot of rich guys.
This looks very interesting. He's the head of a real company that's still fairly small. Small companies, being much less bureaucratic, are friendlier environments for creative work and pioneering investigations.
Olsen looks like a remarkably intelligent man with a good background in the kinds of science he will be exploring up on ISS. He's also led the development of products that the real world wants and needs.
The space business needs more Olsens. Today there are entirely too many bureaucrats with no vision and no ability to connect with the larger world.
"Beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy." -- B. Franklin
This guys a scientist. Pretty good chance he's not going to be going around hitting switches or being any more careless than any astronaut.
This guys also running his own successful business.
Consider that every $20 million injection into space flight will help insure that there will be a 'next' space flight.
This is a newsworthy story as the this guy is going to be one of the first to use ISS to test crystal growth (which should have a clear advantage in a ISS's microgravity setting), his company's infrared cameras. It really is a business expense for him. As opposed to the first space tourists which were just that tourists. He's testing ISS as the prototype for a space based manufacturing facility.
Thalasar
It is also noteworth because he will be the first to carry his own significant research up with him. He's not going to just "stay the hell out of the way". This guy isn't some boy-band wannabe. He's a real scientist with real experiments he want to carry out.
Where's my lobbyist? Right here.
I read a great article after the first guy went into space where the writer summed up the "sour grapes" reaction from so many who were disturbed that a rich guy could buy a trip to space - it was jealously.
People were envious that one person could actually buy his way into space. Surely, space should be left to scientists, intellectuals, dreamers, etc. rather than a memeber of the "wealthy elite".
The reality is when ship,car,train and airplane travel debuted, the passenger list comprised government-sanctioned types or the very wealthy.
After a time, all forms of travel become accessible to more people from other walks of life and eventually become commonplace.
I say good for this guy. May space become even more accessible to those willing to buy a ticket.
Once again, the journalistic thoroughness of the editors shines through. The question is whether they'll link to this story or the dupe Taco will post tomorrow.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Oracle playboy Larry Ellison is "multi-talented, not only is he an acute business but he is also a jet pilot, marketing genius, sports enthusiast and world champion yacht racer"
Nietzsche once said people who aspire to lofty ideas ( like "help inspire today's youth to dream big" ) often have very simple, direct, greedy drives that propel them. A scientist might say he's out to prove the hardest theorem, but perhaps all he wants is fame ( eg. Dr. Watson says in his book on decoding DNA that he simply wanted to beat the competitors & become famous ). A philosopher might set out to "find the truth", but perhaps all he wants is tenure at some ivy league institution. Looks to me like Dr. Gregory Olsen simply wants good PR for his firm with this stunt...claiming to inspire American youth seems outlandish.
Pretty sad when the Russian folks are able to send average Joe for a joy ride in space with a return journey...and we (here in the US) don't even have the ability to launch and return the pro's with the whole state of NASA these days. And we are looking to go back to the moon and Mars??
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
Did you notice that this time, the US reaction is more laid back? Perhaps the US will begin to take up tourists of their own (eventually).
Frankly, it surprises me that the Russians are the first to realize the profit potential.
So, here's a question... If the US and Russia started to compete for space travellers (and you had the money), which agency would you trust? Why?
It seems one is gathering experience catering their programs to the rich folks, yet the other would have some "whiz bang" technology. Tough call, really.
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So the tourists are paying most of the unit costs of the rocket- and the Russians get to send along 2 more astronauts (cosmonauts) as well.
Yes, the Soyuz rocket really is that cost effective (the Russians use this amazingly hi-tech special technology called a 'production line' and the rocket is designed from the ground-up to be cheap/rugged- unlike in the West where it is designed to be 'high performance'.) It's a very different mindset.
I remember one of the American astronauts was asking one of the technicians wearing an ordinary white coat, standing next to the rocket he was about to launch on about whether the nozzles can swivel. "Oh yes up to 30 degrees! Watch"- *wrench* (bonk- hit's the stops), *wrench* (bonk- hit the other stops). Astronaut starts sweating. (Apparently in the west they tend to go with a clean-room attitude to their rockets and treat everything gently like it is made of glass- the Russians are more pragmatic about something about to see the brutality of a launch environment.)
And of course, on the day it worked perfectly.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"The third time we went to the moon was boring too, eh? Seems like today once something has been done once it isn't worth paying attention to after. For some reason people watched how many years of Friends episodes though? 30 minutes of peoples lives, gone, every week for years.
I, for one, live north of the Cape and watch every shuttle launch I possibly can. Most people don't any more. I guess it depends on your interests.