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Third 'Space Tourist' Blasts Off Into Space
auckland map writes "A Russian Soyuz rocket has lifted off from the Central Asian steppes, launching U.S. millionaire scientist Gregory Olsen and a new Russian-U.S. crew on a two-day journey to the international space station. Olsen is reportedly paying $20 million for this trip." From the article: "The cash-strapped Russian Federal Space Agency has turned to space tourism to generate money. Olsen is the third non-astronaut to visit the orbiting station. California businessman Dennis Tito paid about $20 million for a week long trip to the space station in 2001, and South African Mark Shuttleworth followed a year later."
Russia could probably get something going if they work it correctly. I am sure that this kind of business could be more profitable than selling nuclear technology and Soviet-era weapons to other countires. It's honest business, and can generate a huge amount of $$$.
Get some.
...I am willing to offer a one year tour around a nearby star, getting at a distance of about 1 AU. To maintain the comforts of gravity and atmosphere, I have identified a suitable location on a nearby planet. The external atmosphere contains mild contaminants, however, should be quite breathable. A mass particle transport utility shall be provided upon receipt of first half of my requested sum.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
Does that mean these guys are being drugged, shown a couple of movies for a week, and released having been fleeced of their millions? If that's true, I'm sure these Russian space guys will get hired by Hollywood...
If they could just get us to believe that file sharing is wrong?
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Olsen is reportedly paying $20 million for this trip.
Big deal. It costs me about that much to commute too these days.
Perhaps we shouldn't have let this guy get too acquainted with the Russians...
End transmission.
Sir, that sentence doesn't have any sense to me, I'll try again...
head explodes
That's no moon...
Let's say scientist, engineer, inventor, or maybe inspiration (his bio at his company's site).
You would think that any manned spaced launch (and many unmanned ones) would be important News for Nerds wouldn't you?
Still, this story hits the front page about 17 hours after the launch.
I did know it was going but perhaps some would have watched on TV if they knew the launch was taking place ie: Slashdot could run a story *beforehand*.
For those of you who missed the live video, the footage was excellent, gorgeous steady tracking footage was provided by a telescope mounted camera followed by live in-capsule footage right through all the stage burnouts (never seen *live* interior shots on a shuttle launch) and then about 15 mins of on-orbit initial operations footage. I thoroughly recommend watching the live feed for the Exp 13 launch.
Plus the crew had a cool little troll (the little plastic ones) on a bungee to show the capsules movements on orbit.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
Google reports 1040 hits of "cash-strapped" near "Russian space agency". I don't intend to add great insight here, but in today's sophisticated capitalist societies, there must be other synonyms much as the Eskimos supposedly had 40 words for snow.
Now, when we have American in orbit, we can take more aggresive stance towards payments-for-flights. We could not do that day ago because we could've scared him off, running away from Baikonur :)
"We will also discuss compensation for McArthur's return because formally speaking we don't have any such obligation, either."
"...Meanwhile, the American cash filled Space Agency (NASA) is still unable to put men into space...even after billions of dollars have been spent!"
To me, we Americans still do not get it! Clearly, of the two space agencies, one of them is doing or getting it right. Can we say it is we the Americans? I doubt, but stand to be corrected.
Let's pool together and send George and Dick into orbit.
Will the Russians give us 50% off if we don't want them back?
Twenty million is a non trivial amount of money. And I suppose he is doing some experiments of his own up there, but how much time does $20 million buy your average space tourist on the go? And how much return on investment are his experiments likely to generate for him?
If the duration of the stay is long enough, I suppose that you could conceivibly do some worth while research. I wonder what the cost would have to drop to for various large corporations to be willing to pay the cost to put some of their science people onto the ISS for prolonged research?
END COMMUNICATION
Since the Russians are the only country currently capable of bringing crew and cargo to and from the space station, I think they have the right to put whoever they damn well please in their crew.
According to the site for Sensors Unlimited (Olsen's company), Dr. Gregory Olsen will be doing a number of live webcasts from the International Space Station, from October 3-7.
The last three manned launches from Baikonur I watched live (Exp 10, 11, 12)
They went on time as advertised (Exp 12 actually launched in 'moderate' weather).
Now I fully understand the reason, the Shuttle has to be 'just right' to launch because there are very few abort options whereas the Soyuz can be (and has been) aborted in most if not all stages of flight.
Certainly, if it was a Shuttle Launch, you could say that any pre-advertised launch could be raising false hopes but a Soyuz cancellation is 'unusual' these days.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
When the new station was proposed, Congress said no way, $6-billion was way too much. So, NASA trumped up the "international" space station. Let's bring Russia in on it.
That was s'posed to make it cheaper for us.
Well guess what... Russia has been broke a lot longer than the ISS has been around. We had to pay them to make their module -- out of scrap parts they had lying around. We had to pay them launch it. All that cost us more than if we had done it ourselves.
Then, we had to build and install converters and couplers, because the scrap parts Russia built their module out of was up to spec. We had spend even more money to send up guys to attach the module. Three space walks alone were spent just hooking up cables and converters.
And, let's not forget that to make it "international" and reachable by the Russians, we had to greatly increase the inclination of the orbit. That means, we have to burn more fuel to get to it, which means we carry a few tons less cargo each trip.
Now, Russia is making money off it, using it as a get-away for anybody with enough cash. Nice.
Or is it because, since he went up with the Russians, he is a "Cosmonaut"?
Seriously, this guy is going up there and doing some science, rather than just hanging out for the ride. He must have gone through some training in order to be able to go, regardless of the money he spent.
So, unless by "non-astronaut" you mean "cosmonaut", you are insulting the man, rather unfairly IMHO.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
The first two space tourists just happened to be members of congress. In April 1985, Senator Jake Garn (UT) flew on space shuttle mission 51-D. In January 1986, Representative Bill Nelson (FL) flew on mission 61-C. Both of these people should be called space tourists because they sure as hell were not professional astronauts.
Did anyone else read that wrong and thought he was a 'Third Space' tourist? Haven't we learned fron the ancient races?!
"He's contriving some experiments"
;).
Nonono. _He_ is the _experiment_.
He's the third in a series of experiments. The first was the pioneering experiment involving Dennis Tito as test subject.
These space experiments are probably more noteworthy and useful than any of those conducted by the NASA in recent years.
NASA did the Mars probe thing decades ago. Now they're trying to do the moon thing again. When did NASA become a branch of Hollywood?
BTW, the test subject becomes a tourist if the newspapers/media don't talk about it. In which event the experiment is considered a success.
The way people cheer and clap whenever the space shuttle takes off sure doesn't give me much confidence in it.
[snipped list of what bringing the Russians aboard has cost the US]
It costs the Russians somewhere around 7M US$ to bring a NASA astrounaut to the ISS. It would have cost NASA ca. 71M US$ to do the same, if they only could manage to stop their flying bricks from blowing up every time the things need to do something more complicated than floating through the void. If anything, NASA has saved approximately 324M US$ since 2003 by taking the Russian route.
FACTs: Russia is increasing millitary spending by 30%+
i a/mo-budget.htm
Russia is raking it in selling oil at huge profits.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russ
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
the lady teacher on challanger, that was #1.
Also John Glenn in his 70s was hardly a prime modern astro. Make him a 1/2 tourist even though hes an oldschool astro.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
oh come on, don't be a jackass!
For me it's the same pays for the violins, but if NASA did pay for russians to get their part done, big deal, the thing that matters is that they got it DONE!
It fuels research & development, and remember: Russians are those who gets there cheap & reliable!
It's very important to develop methods to get there cheaper.
Besides, internation space station sounds neater x)
To be serious, it brings the two countries closer together, and rest of the world, now to get ESA participating...
Pulsed Media Seedboxes
Jealousy has gotten the best of you because you weren't the one who started Microsoft, huh?
I don't care if you consider him a tourist or a crewmember. What's the point of arguing over semantics?
If anyone RTFuckingA, you missed the most important part.
Here it is, again:
"Olsen is the third non-astronaut"
Did you catch it this time?
"Non-astronaut"?
No, that's not what I'm referring to.
"Third"?
Bingo!!
Do you know what that means?
That other people have already done it, and he was the THIRD.
Whoop-D-Fucking-Do.
All of you should already know that when the FOURTH person does it, then will be worthy of discussion on this forum.
Until then, grow the fuck up!! Is it any wonder that nerds are so tortured in school?
It would be more useful to spend a few of them in sites like Give me a dollar