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A $100 Million Trip to the Moon

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the you-can-get-cheese-in-wisconsin-cheaper dept.

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." "

4 of 451 comments (clear)

  1. Russsia shouldn't be the only one by JossiRossi · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Just a boy doing unproffesional IT work that's way above his head.
    1. Re:Russsia shouldn't be the only one by stlhawkeye · · Score: 5, Insightful
      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.

      --
      "I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
  2. Re:Warning by imsabbel · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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...

    --
    HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
  3. Couldn't have said it better by jscotta44 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.