Walk in Space for $15 Million (Plus Airfare)

avtchillsboro writes "A NY Times article has details on a news release by Space Adventures Ltd. (SAL). SAL has previously provided space trips to three wealthy individuals for (US)$20 million. The article announces the $15 million EVA 'upgrade', and quotes SAL chief executive Eric Anderson, who says that the plan has been approved by the Federal Space Agency of the Russian Federation; but the article also says that NASA has not been informed." From the article: "Fewer than 450 people have traveled to space, and the club of spacewalkers is even more exclusive. Just 151 people have stepped outside the relative safety of their craft to greet the void with only a visor to separate life and death. 'Spacewalk is the ultimate experience that we've managed to invent as humans,' said Tom Jones, a former astronaut and spacewalker who is an adviser to Space Adventures. Being outside the craft when 'there's nothing between you and the ground below but empty space,' he said, is 'incomparable.'"

Comments

NASA not informed?

[Zouden]

I wasn't aware that NASA had to be informed about EVAs in space. If the Russians want to allow it, who's to stop them?

Re:NASA not informed?

[MichaelSmith]

who's to stop them?

Assuming that this is an EVA from the ISS they could egress from the Russian airlock but if there is a problem with that airlock they may have to enter through the US airlock. While outside they may have to interact with US hardware such as the external surfaces of the modules, communication gear, etc.

I think NASA should definitely have a say in who does EVAs around the ISS.

Also I think an EVA from a Soyuz would be out of the question on safety grounds.

Re:NASA not informed?

[cyclone96]

You are right...while they could egress the Russian Airlock (Pirs) and hang out over on the Russian Segment, most EVAs take some advantage of NASA assets. Primarily communications - the audio from the suits is relayed through the NASA Tracking and Data Relay satellite system which essentially has global coverage. While the EVA could be done with only Russian communications assets, it would take place only over Russian groundsites (about 15 minutes every orbit of 90 minutes). There is a considerable safety margin gained with the constant communications.

Russian EVAs also take advantage of the external US television cameras, including those that are on the robotic arm. The robotic arm takes some planning and crew time to reposition, which is another NASA asset they are utilizing.

Frankly, I'm somewhat surprised the Russians are offering this. I don't think the general public quite has a sense of how complex and how dangerous EVA actually is. The suits themselves are complicated little machines, and you need a great deal of training to react to emergencies (pump failures, leaks, etc.) to keep yourself from getting killed. Additionally, most EVA astronauts go through a lot of personal training to build up upper body strength and endurance. This is because doing an EVA is physically grueling, since you are working against the pressure in the suit.

In other words, whoever goes outside really needs to know what they are doing. This is in contrast with simply riding up for the week onboard. While the trip up/down is dangerous, the customer doesn't really have to know/do all that much, except stay strapped into the seat and be trained on how to use the toilet.

Re:NASA not informed?

[AJWM]

The suits themselves are complicated little machines,

The NASA suits are (over-?) complicated machines. The Russian suits are much simpler in design. (Most studies I've seen of "next generation" suits borrow a lot from Russian design.) Certainly anyone capable of learning technical diving or commercial diving can learn to handle a space suit, and you're just as dead if something goes wrong in the former cases as the latter.

As for the "physically grueling" aspect, tourists are just going to be floating around sightseeing, not doing maintenance or construction work.

Door Charge

[WindowsIsForArseWipe]

$15 Million for the space walk but you better have the $100 million if you hope to get back in!

How many times

[Anonymous Coward]

We can send Billy Gates to space almost 3333 times;D

More exclusive Space Adventures!

[pieterh]

Over 450 people have been to space, and 150 have walked in space, but did you know that no-one has ever eaten hot chilis in space?!!

Yes, for only a few dollars more you can be the first* to:

  - Sing "I did it my way" while orbiting the equator ($15m)
  - Take part in a Rheingold-approved smart mob from 150m up! ($16.5m)
  - Experience the dark side of the moon ($50m)
  - Dig for diamonds and gold on the surface of the moon ($350m)**
  - Dare to try "extreme reentry", just you and a suit and a chute ($5m)
  - Do the 'No HAL!' space dance ($30m)
  - Learn to patch an inflatable space station using chewing gum and frozen urine ($22.5m)
  - Take guitar lessons in space ($32m)
  - Conceive your next baby in space ($40m for two)

* Alien visitations not included.
** Precious items recovered from the lunar surface are the property of the tour company.

Re:More exclusive Space Adventures!

[Mantrid42]

- Experience the dark side of the moon ($50m)

This one actually just means that you watch the Wizard of Oz and listen to Pink Floyd... in SPACE!

FSA

[Toby The Economist]

"...that the plan has been approved by the Federal Space Agency of the Russian Federation", who, according to another source, a Mr.Satan, would gladly sell your soul to the devil for the right price, no questions asked.

Lease back

[MichaelSmith]

Since space adventures are (apparently) doing so well with their business perhaps they should buy the ISS. NASA doesn't really need to own it anyway.

They could lease back a couple of permanant spots in the station from the new owners and establish an arrangement for safe harbour in the case of a shuttle failure, at least until 2010.

Tom Jones in space?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not unusual.

Re:$15 million for a thrill?

[Tim C]

Taken to its logical conclusion, none of us here should be spending the money on an internet connection, computer, console, TV, etc. Sure, none of those things on their own are very expensive, but taken as a whole over the whole population, it adds up.

My £15/month for my ADSL connection, for example, would feed a family or two in the poorest parts of Africa, and yet here I am...

Any ideas?

[ShooterNeo]

Is there any way for a person born into the 'middle class' of American society (access to education, minimal crime suburban living) to make 20 million, much less 35 million, before they are too old to go to space? Let's arbitrarily choose a cutoff age of 60.

I can think of ways that a person MIGHT be able to accumulate this much wealth (I am ommitting exceptional cases, like being one of an enormous number of computer scientists to invent an effective search engine, or doing whatever it takes to be selected as corporate CEO) , but markets change over a person's career fast enough that there's just no way to know.

For instance, the highest paying profession today that a person can take a known route to (there's no known route to becoming a corporate CEO or Donald Trump of real estate) that I can think of would be a specialty surgeon. But, that's in today's market : a surgeon is just a highly skilled technician, the reason salaries are so high is because of the extremely large workload and limited supply of surgeons. (for instance, if a surgeon made the average salary of $200,000 a year but worked 80 hours a week, they only make about 50 bucks an hour. Numerous other jobs make that much money, just noone works those hours)

It is doable : if the person finished their education at 30, they have 30 years to make 15 million dollars. TODAY in some specialties, like orthopedics, the average salary is several hundred thousand. Prudent investment, with decent interest rates, might mean a person would only need to invest about 5 million 15 years earlier, and receive the average overall historical rate of return for the stock market.

No guarantees...but it sounds doable.

Lawyers also have a good shot. If you cashed in on just one million dollar settlement every 2 years, making the 30-40% contingency, plus collecting fees for other smaller cases, a lawyer could make the money. Potentially, much sooner : represent the parents of a crippled child because some deep pocket entity made a preventable error, and 30% of the 10 million dollar settlement is yours. Invest it, and plan on going to space in 15 years. Only a tiny fraction of the lawyers in this country ever collect on something that big, I suspect, however. (I don't actually know if this is the case)

All of this assumes many things, 30 years ago (1976) no-one could have predicted that commercial space flight would be available for 15 million dollars. Most people would have probably assumed it would be much, much cheaper and more common, actually. Or un-available.

I wonder what other unique life experiences can be had for 15 million. I can't think of anything that costs more than a million, actually. An enormous mansion or private jet doesn't count, that isn't unique enough.

Re:Any ideas?

[Will_Malverson]

Is there any way for a person born into the 'middle class' of American society (access to education, minimal crime suburban living) to make 20 million, much less 35 million, before they are too old to go to space? Let's arbitrarily choose a cutoff age of 60.

Starting at age 25, get a reasonably well-paying job like computer programmer, earning $60,000 per year. Pretend that you got a normal job earning $30,000 per year and live the lifestyle of a $30k/year earner. Thanks to taxes, you'll have about $18,000 per year to invest.

Put your $18,000 per year into the stock market, and invest wisely enough that you get a 13% return. Historically, the stock market has returned about 12%/year, so you'll need to be a bit better than average. Learn how the market works and learn how to find companies that are undervalued. For reference, for the 41 years between 1965 and 2005, Berkshire Hathaway (Warren Buffet's company) returned an average of over 21%.

The total value of your holdings will pass $20,000,000 after about 40 years, when you're 65 years old. If you can match Buffet, it'll only take 28 years, and after 40 years, you'll have almost $300 million.

This page:

http://www.moneychimp.com/articles/finworks/fmbasi nv.htm

lets you see the formulas involved and play with their little Javascript calculator, though it only allows contributions of up to $9999 per year. You can enter $18 / year and multiply the end result by 1000.

Let me introduce you...

[celotil]

From the summary:

From the article:

"Fewer than 450 people have traveled to space, and the club of spacewalkers is even more exclusive. Just 151 people have stepped outside the relative safety of their craft to greet the void with only a visor to separate life and death. 'Spacewalk is the ultimate experience that we've managed to invent as humans,' said Tom Jones, a former astronaut and spacewalker who is an adviser to Space Adventures. Being outside the craft when 'there's nothing between you and the ground below but empty space,' he said, is 'incomparable.'"

Man, meet Infinity. Infinity, meet Man... Can I get you two something to drink? Perhaps a scotch, or some champagne?

I think we should send our politicians into space, and I don't mean this as some sort of crass joke about death in a vacuum. We should send up these "World Leaders" and let them see just how small, how fragile our Earth is, how little blue-green haze separates us from the infinite donut, or is it a soccer ball?

I've had dreams of space, vivid, lucid dreams of being out in the infinite with nothing separating me from the universe - not even a space suit, cause they're dreams you know. I've filled my head with enough pictures of Earth to imagine the sight of our space-faring home, looping and winging it's way through the Big Black in it's slightly off-centre orbit around Sol, our system of planets and star meandering along with the rest of the third arm.

I'd love to see it for real. I know I probably won't in this life-time, so reincarnation is a nifty thing to wish upon for now.

The politicians have the money and the resources though. They should go up, climb out of our gravity well and look upon the Earth, see just for themselves what it's like to stare down at their countries and feel the wonder of covering the United States of America, or Australia, with their palm, to blot out the United Kingdom with their thumb.

They need to feel that wonder, that awe of seeing where we all live and realising that it's a tiny place in the universe, and we should really be focusing our war efforts on peaceful resolutions, scientific colaboration, and a joint effort to get out into our own galaxy, at least, and see if we can really make something of ourselves, rather than squabbling like children in the school yard.

I'm sorry, I have no real point, I'm rambling.

Re:$15 million for a thrill?

[suffe]

It's not like they are taking a pile of $15M and setting it on fire. I would assume that most of the cost related to this will go back in to the economy in one way or another. Labor costs for constructing the EVA suit, material costs, labor costs for digging the material out of the ground et cetera. In other words, the money will just be allocated to some other place in the economy. Recommended reading would be Macroeconomics 101, Velocity of Money and perhaps something by Modigliani or Friedman.

Now as for the price of the additional rocket fuel (not included in the $15M) is a completely different matter. Now that is, literally. burning money.

Patented!

[MarkByers]

Nice ideas. I've decided to patent them all so please add $1m to all your listed prices, for royalty payments. Thank-you.

Also I am patenting:

Accessing a database in space.
Running a webserver in space.
Using a mobile phone in space.
Listening to music in space.
Swinging on a swing in space.
Plus many others...

Sure.

[Shivetya]

You have to take risks, work your butt off, and be a little lucky.

Did you see the recent article on the 10 dumbest internet sales ideas that made money?

Does that give you a hint?

Look, there are many successful people who had a great many stupid ideas. The nice thing is that the stupid ideas they had are usually forgotten, unless they already are rich and then they get ridiculed for awhile until their next big success.

People constant rant that the middle class has no chance. Well that is bunk. Hell you picked lawyers and such (with unrealistic views of what the majority get into) and many of them came from middle class families. Lots of doctors are the same way.

Do you have what it takes to dedicate 8+ years to learn a trade, and then another 8-16 to be very successful at it?

Most people don't. That is what separates those who make the transition from lower/middle/upper to the ranks of millionaires. Many people reach a level of contentment. They are happy and see no reason to push. For others its a dream worth obtaining.

Got to love some of the typical whine responses I saw, about how wasteful it is, especially throwing out the guilt card. I don't what is worse, posters throwing the guilt card or race card. Seems the whiners always have a deck to play with. Yet society doesn't move on without people having dreams and the incentive to get there.

There probably are a lot of HS/College students this day looking to go to space. Many will plan for it and only a few will succeed. A lot of that success is from hard work and dedication. Sure luck will help but if you count on it you are already half way to failing.

The common thread among the guys we label "the owners" of the company I work for is that they put in more hours than most people imagine. Two of them are over 75 and they still "work". The spend their freetime alright, but they still work. Yet they got where they were because they did put in the hours. Do you have what it takes to put in 60-80 hours a week for dozens of years?

So, middle class or not, a spacewalk is possible for almost anyone. The key is making it happen. Hell, who knows, by the time you have the money needed you probably will have found something else to do with it. You might even be one to shut the whiners up by dedicating large amounts to hunger!

The ultimate experience

[Frightening]

"Spacewalk is the ultimate experience that we've managed to invent as humans"

Ha! Author obviously doesn't own a GeForce 7900GTX, and/or he's never tried pot. There is nothing like pot..

Re:Sure, destroy the environment for your kicks

[BlacKat]

Over-reacting much?

Last I heard the space tourists didn't go up on a special launch just for them, they went up on a mission that was already scheduled... so the fuel would of been burnt anyway.

As for the travelling around the world... you just come of sounding like a jealous jerk with that little rant... dotting feces around the landscape... oh yea, that is going to have an impact... unlike the millions of animals doing exactly that daily.

I hope you drive some nice fuel-efficient vehicle... or better yet bike/walk everywhere after that rant... or do you need to pop down to the gas-station and fill up your SUV now? ;)

Re:Sure, destroy the environment for your kicks

[lawaetf1]

Wrong, wrong, my good chum.
Space tourism is a whole new industry that's completely separate from the tag-along flights that Mark Shuttleworth, et al, did. Have you heard of Virgin's space tourism program or have you been living in a cave for the last 3 years with your sunglasses on and your fingers in your ears?
And the fuel wouldn't have "been burned anyway" as you so blithely put it. There's a very exact ratio of pounds of fuel needed to get 1lb into orbit.

As far as traveling abroad, yes, I'm a little disappointed that I can't bounce around the world to my heart's content. I can *afford* to but I can't in good conscience set fire to a few dozen barrels of fuel so that I can feel "travelled." I'll read a good book and let my imagination roam if need be.

I don't drive (or own a car), don't buy new clothes or other crap unless I need to. Hell, I even feel a bit guilty about my profession. Every time I rack a new machine for one of my clients for some generally worthless web site I think about the thousands of pounds of coal (or gas or whatever) that it took to create and ship this shitty little 1U and that it will cause to be burned in its lifetime.

Your comparison of human waste to animal exemplifies your misunderstanding of the situation. An environmental system can handle, and even needs, waste products to maintain balance. But when you have thousands of people in a certain area at the same time, year round, the system can no longer handle the excess and the result is -- pollution. Ditto for our rampant consumption of fossil fuels. A few forest fires here and there were easily absorbed by the global system but our current carbon output is way, way beyond the system's ability to maintain homeostasis.

I'm not saying we should all stay inside and refrain from any activity at all. But we do need to realize that our planet is at a crisis point right here. I'd love to go into space and be able to cup God's handiwork between my hands. But I have too much respect for what's here to indulge myself in such a trip.

I just ask that we try to be a little more thoughtful about our actions. The pursuit of happiness is important but it should not come at the expense of our home.

Re:Lottery

[Joebert]

Sure.
But what about all the people that enjoy gimmicks ?
Do you think they'd fork over $20 USD for a chance to walk in space ?
I do, only because I've seen alot of people fork over $20 USD for scratchoff lottery tickets where the prize is $1 million dollars.

Hell, do you know how many times I've forked over that $20 ? I had a stack of tickets 2 inches thick before I gave up.

Sure, Slashdot readers might not like the idea of buying a ticket, maybe some would, but you can't deny that lottery tickets have been around for quite a long time, so they have to appeal to someone.

NASA Exploring MySpace

[daikimatsu]

In other news, NASA launched a three year program to explore MySpace.

--

Technically... they are correct

[NotQuiteReal]

when the Powerball gets really high and I see all these people rushing out to spend hundreds of dollars on tickets.. thinking they are making an investment or that they are increasing their chances.

Technically, you are better off spending, say $52 on lotto tickets on one draw where the prize is "big", rather than one per week, when the prize is way too low vs the odds.

1 ticket = 1 chance in 142 million, 2 tickets = 1 chance in 71 million, etc... assuming you don't pick the same numbers on each ticket, of course :-)

BTW - in Vegas, I think they only look to see if you have over 20$ in play... then you get free drinks. I figure I make about $6/hr playing video poker, with what I am willing to wager. It is not a loss, but not better than flipping burgers. However, it is much better than most people do in Vegas. I'm with you, I'd prefer to spend money to see Penn & Teller or something, not watch it dwindle on losing propositions.

Lottos (and Slot Machines) are crappy games, odds-wise, but they are worth a buck, once in a while, if you can afford it, but no more than that. If it was your day to get hit by lightning while being stung by a bee - maybe you will win, you'll need it to pay the hospital bills...

Tourism IS the future of space

[davros-too]

Actually, there is a view that space tourism is the key to making space flight affordable. Space tourism - unlike satellite launches, or science - can grow to a large number of launches per year. Therefore economies of scale can come in to play. According to this article http://www.spacefuture.com/archive/public_choice_e conomics_and_space_policy_realising_space_tourism. shtml space tourism is the key to economically viable space travel. Low cost to orbit made possible by space tourism then opens up the really interesting space opportunities.