Pay Rs 400 crore and travel to space station! Meet first private space crew
The three people who have been selected to travel to the space station are all billionaires. Each of them is giving Rs 400 crore.
The first private space station crew was introduced on Tuesday. Three people have also been selected to fly with the SpaceX rocket, which means that 3 private passengers will go to the special station next year. They’ll be led by a former NASA astronaut now working for Axiom Space, the Houston company that arranged the trip for next January.
The three people who have been selected to travel to the space station are all billionaires. Each is giving 400 crores rupees. The first crew will spend eight days at the space station, and will take one or two days to get there aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule following liftoff from Cape Canaveral.
Axiom’s first customers include Larry Connor, a real estate and tech entrepreneur from Dayton, Ohio, Canadian financier Mark Pathy and Israeli businessman Eytan Stibbe, a close friend of Israel’s first astronaut Ilan Ramon, who was killed in the space shuttle Columbia accident in 2003. Each of these first paying customers intends to perform science research in orbit, along with educational outreach.
These people will be led by a former NASA astronaut. These astronauts are now working for Axiom Space. The Houston company has arranged the trip to be proposed in January. Each of the private astronauts had to pass medical tests and will get 15 weeks of training.
The 70-year-old Connor will become the second-oldest person to fly in space, after John Glenn's shuttle flight in 1998 at age 77. He'll also serve under Lopez-Alegria as the capsule pilot.
Russia has been in the off-the-planet tourism business for years, selling rides to the International Space Station since 2001. Other space companies like Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin plan to take paying customers on up-and-down flights lasting just minutes. These trips, much more affordable with seats going for hundreds of thousands versus millions could kick off this year.