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

Door Charge

[WindowsIsForArseWipe]

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

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!

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.