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: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: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.

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.