Energia, Space Adventures Sign Contract for Orbital Space Tourist Flight, Space Walk
VIENNA, Va., June 25, 2020 (Space Adventures PR) – S.P. Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation “Energia” and Space Adventures, Inc. signed a contract for a short duration spaceflight of two spaceflight participants on board the same “Soyuz” spacecraft to the Russian segment of the International Space Station (ISS).
One of the mission participants will have an opportunity to conduct a spacewalk outside the space station, becoming the first private citizen in history to experience open space. Accepted and secured candidates will be required to complete specialized training and additional simulations in preparation for the spacewalk attempt.
“A private citizen completing a spacewalk would be another huge step forward in private spaceflight. We appreciate the chance to celebrate two decades of orbital space tourism with our Russian partners by opening up another first-ever experience. We applaud our colleagues at Energia for working with us to create amazing new adventures in space,” said Eric Anderson, Chairman and CEO of Space Adventures, Inc.
About Space Adventures
Space Adventures, the company that organized the flights for the world’s first private space explorers, is headquartered in the Washington, D.C. metro area. It offers a variety of programs available today, including spaceflight missions to the International Space Station, around the Moon, record-breaking orbital missions, and various training and spaceflight qualification programs. The company’s orbital spaceflight clients include Dennis Tito, Mark Shuttleworth, Greg Olsen, Anousheh Ansari, Charles Simonyi, Richard Garriott, and Guy Laliberté.
18 responses to “Energia, Space Adventures Sign Contract for Orbital Space Tourist Flight, Space Walk”
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“A private citizen completing a spacewalk would be another huge step forward in private spaceflight”…
Pretty freakin’ cool!
Wow. So they push him out the door on a tether and he floats around for awhile before they pull him back in. Pretty freakin’ cool for him but not exactly “one giant leap” stuff. I’m sure it will be pretty standard fare when somebody actually builds that space hotel.
Let’s call it “one baby step” stuff.
i’m not sure that’s how the first commercial spacewalk will go down. They could have the private astronaut do useful things. For example, there are external experiments on the Russian side that get changed out periodically. So they could have the private astronaut remove and/or install a few of those. Having them do something useful means Russia gets paid for someone else to do external maintenance work they’d have to do anyway.
I really think that the Russians will find it easier to use one of their professional cosmonauts to perform any station maintenance. Floating in space is easy and should require no training but actually trying to perform any task there is very difficult. The first astronauts and cosmonauts who tried to perform simple tasks became exhausted until they finally discovered the right technique. I think that teaching a tourist how to actually work in space would be far more time consuming and expensive than it was worth when most tourists would just as soon float around and take pictures anyway.
Early spacewalks were disastrous because early EVA suits weren’t up to the task. The early Gemini EVA suits in particular didn’t cool the astronaut adequately. So heat quickly built up and the suit’s visor fogged up. We’re lucky we didn’t kill an astronaut with those early suits.
Apollo suits, by comparison, had ample cooling capacity via a liquid cooling garment. Heat was dumped to space via a water ice sublimation cooler. Space shuttle era EMUs (still in use on ISS) use a quite similar system.
I think that a commercial astronaut who’s physically fit could certainly help perform simple tasks during an EVA. Russia is going to have to train them how to use the suit safely, so why not also train them how to remove and install bolts to swap out something like a passive external experiment?
I just can’t see it and the reason I can’t is because even a passive external experiment cost millions of rubles to develop and fly. Losses of fasteners and tools happen even to professionals but the loss rate would be even higher for amateurs. Every procedure has a long, incredibly detailed checklist that must be followed and I just can’t see the controllers doing anything more than letting the tourist stand in a safe place and watch while the professionals do their work.
We’ll have to agree to disagree. And we’ll see what the Russians do. Their approach to crewed spaceflight is generally more cavalier than the US, so I wouldn’t put it past them to let a commercial spacewalker do something useful instead of just staring out at the void for an hour or two.
I’m good with that. I tend to be cautious in trying to predict the future anyway. Compared to some discussions I’ve had on this site, ours was a pleasant exchange of views. I’m more than willing to wait and see. If I turn out to be wrong, well, it’s not like we had money on it. 🙂
Same. I don’t feel strongly about this one anyway since it’s quite hard to predict what the Russian space program will do.
A competitive move. If you want a spacewalk, fly with the Russians.
Fine. I actually think private parties going to the ISS is a misuse of taxpayer money. It’s supposed to be a laboratory, not a B&B. Maybe Mr. Bigelow can seize this opportunity to orbit a profitable inflatable B&B where anyone who can afford it can go to spacewalk.
NASA has a mandate to foster the growth of economic activity in space. That’s why they are opening up the national lab to whomever can pony up the money. If Bigelow or Axiom or others make a go of it then that will represent some measure of forward movement in NASA’s prosecution of that mandate. That’s the goal. Let’s see industry elbow NASA out of the space station business.
I understand about the mandate but they’re already shorthanded on crew and I’d like to think that the actual astronauts would throw a fit at the prospect of having to host space tourists. I was hoping for commercial laboratories manned by real research scientists. If industry wants to try to fly and operate their own stations, God love ’em. It seems that everybody advocating for that seems to think that NASA should be the major “anchor” tenant so that private industry continues to get a nice chunk of taxpayer money. Maybe they will when they eventually deorbit the ISS but I have a really hard time envisioning a private entity launching and then, more importantly, running a private station. They will find the costs to be enormous and potential tenants may not have the wherewithal to pay them on a consistent basis possibly leaving them with a station they cannot afford to run. The same thing may end up happening to “space hotels.” The customer base is small and after a few trips won’t be satisfied with floating around and taking pictures or attempting zero-G sex.
I must confess that image of our hero astronauts throwing tantrums fills me with glee as well. But I’m a bad person.
I’ve always been skeptical of that. Industry is really well adapted to 1G. It gives them very few problems. In many ways, it’s actually quite convenient, that and all the air you’d care to breath. You really have to search for that killer application. Artificial corneas aren’t it, apparently.
NASA has been offering researcher experiments free rides to space. The dogs won’t eat the dog food. CASIS has been a disappointment. There’s no there there.
Axiom has contracted to do just that, with a bit of financial assistance from NASA (but not enough financial assistance to attract the interest of Bigelow). Axiom intend to have several modules attached to the ISS by 2024, each with its own propulsion capability, with the intention of operating the aggregate as a free flier once the ISS is done. They plan to make money at this by hosting astronauts from nations that have the desire to send their people to space but lack the technological infrastructure to do so independently. Axiom will also host rich tourists, oligarchs looking for instagram material. They’ll even take paying scientific researchers and their experiments, should such a phenomenon ever arise.
Axiom may fail, but in the short term, while they are ostensibly working on those modules, they will be booking flights to the ISS, one or two a year, starting next year. If that works out, then their commercial space station ambition will have surer footing. If not then not. Capitalism involves risking capital. This venture is riskier than some others, perhaps, so NASA is sweetening the pot. Many ventures fail. Business is a messy business.
Or Starship will start offering transport for 100 dollars a kg, and business in space will explode. Grammas will go on cruises and catch norovirus in LEO.
You obviously never heard some of Alan Shepard’s space to ground communication on Gemini 7 when he had that cold. Some of that was pretty close to throwing a fit. 🙂 I did like the reference to grandmas catching norovirus in LEO but space tourism needs to be more than just transportation. Bigelow wants to build a space hotel and then actually charge the crews of the space taxis to stay there. That won’t work so the taxis either won’t go there in the first place or will go there and leave their passengers until the next scheduled flight. This creates the basically unacceptable “lifeboat” problem for all the rich tourists now stranded on an inflatable space station with no way to get home until the next scheduled shuttle. Also, if you’re going to run a halfway decent B&B, you need some staff. They, like the rich tourists, will require oxygen, food, water. clean clothes and working toilets. They’ll also need a lifeboat of their own. Can you imagine the carnage when the toilets clog up? We could have the first LEO environmental disaster!
I confess, it’s been a while.
You’d think a guy from Vegas would know how taxis work. You pay the taxis to bring people, not the other way around. For a guy who has sunk so much of his own fortune into space habitats, he has a nasty habit of taking his ball and going home to sulk. Contrast that with the the SpaceX approach: No customers? Fine. We’ll be our own best customer, and make up the difference in volume. Keep dancing, kids! Did I say 4,000 satellites? I meant 40,000.
I forgot to mention that he’d actually have to pay his staff. That may come as a surprise to him in case he might actually think they’d pay him to work on his paradise in orbit. What’s he think he’s running, the Velvet Comet?