A $100 Million Trip to the Moon

Kyusaku Natsume writes "Russia's federal space agency will offer a $100m trip to the moon. From the UK Guardian's article:" "We've had the necessary technology for many years, the only problem will be finding someone prepared to pay that much." "

Comments

Russsia shouldn't be the only one

[JossiRossi]

I find it odd that Russia is at the forefront of commercial space travel. I mean they are capable of it, but I somehow thought that by now a public company could have pulled it off already. NASA f'ing up space travel with it's politics and disillusioning some about it likely has not helped.

Re:Russsia shouldn't be the only one

[stlhawkeye]

I find it odd that Russia is at the forefront of commercial space travel. I mean they are capable of it, but I somehow thought that by now a public company could have pulled it off already. NASA f'ing up space travel with it's politics and disillusioning some about it likely has not helped.

Blame government hand-wringing. The last time they allowed a "space tourist" on a shuttle flight, it was a schoolteacher who won a contest, and she got killed. NASA is understandably reluctant to suffer such a disaster again. The Challenger incident set our space program back to such a serious degree that it's still never recovered. Before Challenger, talk was afoot of orbital space flight being the next wave of public transportation. Imagine flying from New York to Tokyo in a few hours!

NASA never really recovered from Challenger, and Columbia should have been to nail in NASA's coffin, as it was. And it may prove to have been in the end. We're well overdue to privatize American space exploration. That doesn't mean that government cannot engage in it, only that government shouldn't be the owners of American space initiatives. NASA ought to be split into two groups: a regulatory/oversight body to manage space projects and allocate research time on government-owned orbital platforms such as Hubble, and a second body that is purely scientific in nature. Private American spaceflight would be completely permissable on the grounds that telemetry, observations, and research conducted on such flights be made available to NASA for internal use (not republication).

Get NASA out of the hardware and flight businesses.

Re:Russsia shouldn't be the only one

[JossiRossi]

I suppose part of my beef is part of the space flight industry's history.

Space flight is very costly, and starting up a company for this would be astronomical (hyuck hyuck). Some of the reasons the cost is so high is because it's hard to get investors due to the high risk. (Kill one crew, just one, and you're likely to go under in a week). The other reasons are because the current technology is extremely expensive. Government programs tend to get a bit bloated on the cost and as such anyone entering would initially need government size funds to draw from.

Had there been contests for cheap spaceflight options (like the one that was won a few months back but I am an idiot and the name escapes me.) Had these kinds of projects been done in tandem to the governmnetal developement, I think we'd be looking at a whole different view of space travel. I think ultimately the quickest way to get to the stars is the cooperation and parrallel evolution of the government and private sectors in the field.

Re:Russsia shouldn't be the only one

[CFTM]

It's interesting to see just how much our society has changed with the advent of modern medicine. 150-200 years ago many many many babies were still dying in child birth or young children were dying from disease. Death was common place, thus there wasn't a huge uproar when it occured. Today, we've found ways to remove ourselves from death as much as possible through antibiotics, modern surgical techniques and doing things like pasturizing milk. The unintended consequence of this advancement has become a society that is absolutely mortified of death. We think we can outrun, outsmart or create technology to put off the inevitable but the reality is we can't.

In all actuality, in the scheme of humanity, the shuttle disasters should not be catastrophic. Shit happens. It's sad and it's terrible but bad things happen all the time. I think that if space exploration is going to ever take off, we're going to have to accept that there will be a "wild-west" era where things are very dangerous and many many people die. Too bad we [the united states] is a litigious society full of people looking to get rich quick. For crists sake, the astronauts know what kind of risk they are taking; to quote Kevin Smith from the Donnie Darko Director's Cut director track [I know he's not the director he's part of the commentary] "You need an acceptable level of insanity".

Re:Russsia shouldn't be the only one

[Anonymous Coward]

In all actuality, in the scheme of humanity, the shuttle disasters should not be catastrophic. Shit happens.

In the time it took you to write your comment,
more people died in SUV's than died in the
Challenger disaster. Nobody except their next-of-kin and a few highway patrol officers and EMT's will even know about it. Where's the public
outcry?

Hell, going into space atop a giant roman candle
is dangerous. The Astronauts knew that before they climbed in. They thought the trip was
worth the risk. So do I.

Re:Russsia shouldn't be the only one

[ahodgson]

The astronauts are more than willing to take the risks now. It's the politicians and bureaucrats who aren't.

Re:Russsia shouldn't be the only one

[dptalia]

It also has to do with birthrates. During the Civil war over 60% of the US's population was under 20. We lost hunderds of thousands of lives in the War and didn't blink. In Vietnam the percentage of people under 20 was under 50, and we started screaming bloody murder after a few thousand lives were lost. Now, the population under 20 has again dropped and we're terrified of doing anything that might kill someone. With big families you could "afford" to lose a child or two. Now, losing a child may mean you have no children left, or have halved your numbers. So people are more risk adverse.

Re:Warning

[imsabbel]

Well, considering people paid >10 Million for just getting into low earth orbit, 100 million for going all the way to the moon (including seeing earth as a tiny sphere in the disctance) doesnt seem _that_ out of place...

Russia + EU

[amightywind]

This shows how desperate Russia is becoming maintaining its space exploration capability. Russia has neither the rockets nor the spacecraft to support such an offer. I think it makes more sense for them to combine efforts with the EU going forward. The EU has no manned program, but good space technology and relatively deep pockets. Russia has well developed space technology but little funding. It would make an impressive combination.

Re:Russia + EU

[Neticulous]

You make a good point. It probably wont happen anytime soon, if ever at all, but imagine if there were no politcal bounds to space exploration, if the top 20, or even top 5 countries got together and funded one space exploration thingy-mabob, we could really make some progress.

I see space exploration as a means for humankind, not just americans, or russions, or chinese, or what-have-you but humankind as a whole. Countries need to realize this, together, and start cooperating in the goal for space exploration, f*ck this space race sh*t, who cares who gets there first, we just need to *get there*. and it would happen alot quicker if countries worked together to get humankind as a whole into space. Hell, most of us watch star trek, its not just "americans" or "russians" in space, it EARTH, the FEDERATION. We really need to create something along those lines, asap.

Re:Russia + EU

[ggzeama]

I do not agree. Yes, it's true, Russia is desperate, but this may put some money in their pockets to continue with their current programs, and I do not see what's wrong with that.
If they made this offer, they have the means to do it, I bet on this.

IMHO, to say that "The EU has no manned program, but good space technology", this is plain wrong. Just remember the Mars Express/Beagle story. If it weren't for the US, no Mars geological data would be available today .... As for the deep pockets, they are too busy to spend the money into their state-sustained economies.

Re:Russia + EU

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean Europeans spend their taxes on social programs rather than unnecessary wars of choice? How dare they!

Fuck Bush and his fascist, mentally defficient supporters. These people are blind. Bush funnels tax money to well connected business while giving the shaft to poor people, young people, and everyone who values human life over oil company profits. But these idiot rednecks vote for him in record numbers just because he shoves a Crucifix up his ass and twirls it around while doing lines of coke off the corpses of Iraqi children.

Re:Russia + EU

[gomoX]

When you are the world's most powerful nation, you can do 2 things. You can,
a) become a pragmatist and keep your people happy, while staying out of everyone else's problems, only doing what's in your best interest

or

b) be a philosopher, try to do something in order to fix this fucked up world, by trying to *stop* wars (1), and putting some of that extra money where it can actually help anyone, maybe pull strings to get Sharon to french-kiss a Palestinian guy, whatever

The thing is, you can't have both. It is because Bush is such a fucking hypocrite that everyone hates him, and that terrorists are striking your soil.

The only thing an American president cares is to get reelected. He can't even care about anything else, even if he wanted, because your political system is so fucked up and monopolistic that his own partners would hang him if he did.

And in order to get reelected, as your argument shows, Bush needs to do a). Of course, in order to keep the rest of the world happy, he should at least pretend to do b). The sad thing is, he sucks at this role-playing thing, and he makes your country look like shit in the process.

And finally, really, international politics and religion have *nothing* to do. When you try to mix them, you get arabs hitting planes against buildings and hebrew helicopters firing missiles through windows. Religion is not rational. Therefore, never an argument based on religion will be valid.
Religion gives every extremist the excuse for what he is doing (examples for this are obvious, think Talibans and muslim terrorists).

(1): no war is a just war: unavoidable, maybe, "just", never. This is why you have a justice system in your beloved country, because fist fights are not "just".

Re:Space tourism and lottery

[SnowDog_2112]

You missed the part where he said the ten million people would be paying ten dollars for a chance to win a trip. In other words, only one person goes -- the other ten million subsidize the trip through a lottery.

Re:So lemme see if I got this right...

[brsmith4]

I still don't think it's as difficult as people think it is to get into orbit - or to the moon

Do you care to enlighten us mere mortals as to how you plan to accomplish this with $100 Million? Don't start talking about Space Ship One because even Burt Rutan has stated that the craft is not very useful outside of simply winning the X-Prize and providing valuable data for future designs, which in fact, must be radically different just to achieve orbit (and will also require substancial outside funding and investment, on the order of almost a billion dollars).

Please, take a basic physics class before you start telling people how it's not very difficult to get to orbit or the moon.

Re:Seems a bit steep to me...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the 'dark side', or far side of the moon always faces away from the Earth. The rotation period of the moon is 28 days (approx) and so is the orbital period.

BB

Re:So lemme see if I got this right...

[star_aas]

Please, take a basic physics class before you start telling people how it's not very difficult to get to orbit or the moon.

No, take a very advanced one.

Re:If you decide to...

[turbidostato]

"Some of us young folk will probably be able to take some "tours" for around 1 million or so within 20-30 years I assume (and hope)."

Why do you assume that?

35 years ago, youngsters of that time DID see some of his mates going to the moon. I bet they assumed in 25 years they could go to the moon on an (relatively) affordable basis, like your one million bet -hell, most of them probably belived on some supersonic family-like moonbase. Still, you see, nothing of the like became reality.

If you are younger than mid-therties, nobody, like in NOBODY, has gone to the moon in your life-time, NOONE. Still, you really think is more probable having private trips to the moon on a 25 year time-frame now than 25 years ago? Why!!??

Re:Seems a bit steep to me...

[haggar]

No disrespect to you personally, but this gets modded +4 informative? I thought everybody by now knew that by "dark" side it's meant the far side of the moon, the one we never see. In that sense, the sentence In fact you can see the dark side from Earth is factually incorrect. We have no way to see the far side of the moon from Earth, there is no optical line of sight. (OK, we see small parts of it blah blah..)

Re:So lemme see if I got this right...

[bigpat]

Please, take a basic physics class before you start telling people how it's not very difficult to get to orbit or the moon.

I believe economics is the more appropriate expertise to cite when determining cost.

The physics is well understood, the engineering is a bit more complicated (but has already been done if you are to believe NASA and the Kremlin), so the big costs at this point are materials, assembly and fuel... oh and don't forget all the beaurocrats you have to feed in order to get launch approval.

Re:Space tourism and lottery

[RobertB-DC]

More likely some company will sell the tickets for 15/pop and pocket any profits above the 50 mil.

I might be willing to concede the profits to a company, if they can provide an appropriate level of trust. Otherwise, you're looking at the Russian Mafia, I mean Government, as the return address on your lottery ticket. That doesn't inspire my confidence.

On the other hand, I'd probably still buy the ticket even so. A one in a million chance, times a one in two chance that my $10 would go to Boris & Natasha, still gives me one in two million odds for a trip to the moon! Sweeet.

Couldn't have said it better

[jscotta44]

Thanks for the reality check. The United States has forgotten just how many people died to explore and settle North America. Being on the cutting edge is dangerous. But there are huge rewards for the successful and huge payoffs to those of us left behind. Those pioneers that take the big risks expand our envelope and we get huge benefits from that.

Re:What else is included?

[vertinox]

For that matter, would I be the first guy to have sex in Space?

Look... If you had more than $100 million to blow on gonig to space, you'd would have most likely used it to have sex way before then. You could basically buy an island for that much and import women from all over the world and be bored by sex by the time you wake and say "Hey, I have to much money and I'm bored of spending it on women today. Maybe I should go to them moon instead."

So, you're going to need a whole lot more than $100 million before you reach that point.