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Boeing To Take Space Tourists On Its CST-100 Spacecraft To the ISS

Posted by timothy on from the it's-a-free-world-baby dept.

MarkWhittington (1084047) writes "According to a Thursday story in Investment Business Daily, Boeing, whose CST-100 spacecraft was one of the two winners of NASA's commercial crew competition, will reserve one seat per flight for a paying tourist. For a price comparable to what space tourists now pay for trips on the Russian Soyuz, anyone will be able to take a jaunt to the International Space Station. The move places Boeing in direct competition with the Russians, who are working through a company called Space Adventures for their tourist space jaunts."

9 of 47 comments (clear)

  1. Public access by GrahamJ · · Score: 2

    Don't Americans pay for NASA? Maybe the seats should be given out in a lottery rather than to oligarchs.

    1. Re:Public access by confused+one · · Score: 2

      Although NASA is helping fund the development of the vehicle, to meet their safety specifications, NASA is buying seats on a CST-100, as a service, not buying CST-100s. Think of it as NASA buying seats on a commercial airliner. The vehicle has 7 seats. The way I read the story, NASA is requiring 1 seat for a NASA pilot on the test flight and 4+ seats per launch to ISS. That leaves empty seats...

    2. Re:Public access by confused+one · · Score: 4, Informative

      You haven't paid for anything yet... The 4 billion is for development and infrastructure. You're paying for the pad modification/construction, manufacturing of first articles, flight certification and testing. Normally, if this were a commercial airliner, Boeing would pay for this themselves. They would recoup the cost over the couple hundred planes they constructed and sold. Since there is no business case with and end result allowing them to recoup the cost, they're having the primary customer (NASA) pay the Non Recoverable Engineering costs (NRE). This is standard practice in industry (any and all industry).

      Once certified, NASA, as a customer, will be buying seats on the CST-100, as a service. They're not buying the rocket for their exclusive use; think of it as buying seats on a commercial airliner. NASA will be the primary customer initially; but, not the only customer. Same thing happened with the commercial airliner industry -- in the very early days, one of the major customers was the government and a buyer of cargo space was the U.S. Mail service.

      ISS is not going to be the only destination in the future. Bigelow Aerospace plans to launch a habitation module or two in the next few years. They already have a contract with Boeing to use CST-100 as a transport. It's just the beginning...

    3. Re:Public access by DerekLyons · · Score: 2

      These aren't NASA flights - they're seats on bus (or airplane if you prefer) routes which NASA has bought from Boeing (or SpaceX). Thus Boeing (or SpaceX) is free (in theory) to do whatever the hell they want with any spare capacity.

    4. Re:Public access by LVSlushdat · · Score: 2

      Bigelow Aerospace plans to launch a habitation module or two in the next few years.

      Umm.. They've had two up there since 2006-2007...Genesis I was launched on July 12, 2006, by a converted Russian Dniepr ICBM, and the Genesis II was launched on June 28, 2007, again by the Russians.. According to the Bigelow webpage they're still up there, waiting for visitors... http://bigelowaerospace.com/

      --
      THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
    5. Re:Public access by LVSlushdat · · Score: 2

      Screw going to the ISS.. Boeing (and SpaceX for that matter) need to get together with Bigelow Aerospace, one of our local companies here in Las Vegas, and set up a couple of Bigelow's Expandable spacecraft, two of which have been in orbit since 2006/2007 http://bigelowaerospace.com./ Then these "extreme adventure" trips would be totally of a commercial nature.. No government involvement. From the looks of these structures, they'd make a fantastic "space-hotel", and from what I see of the Genesis II, its got a fair percentage of the open space of the ISS..

      --
      THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
    6. Re:Public access by currently_awake · · Score: 2

      And what about the space station? Boeing didn't pay for that, and there are real costs associated with visiting (scrubber modules for the life support, if nothing else).

    7. Re:Public access by jayrtfm · · Score: 2

      nope, they were proof of concept, incapable of letting anyone enter.

  2. Re:this seems fair by PPH · · Score: 2

    Bumper sticker on the CST-100: Gas, grass or ass. Nobody rides for free.

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.