Space Adventures' big announcement about potential tourists buying a stake in the company is a curious one for reasons I will explain below
Alan Boyle's Cosmic log blog nicely sets out the details of this deal that apparently could see a privately launched Soyuz
But I have my doubts about Alan's suggestion that Space Advenures can bid against NASA for seats on Soyuz as NASA will be buying Soyuz so it can meet its Internatonal Space Station obligations
As for the private Soyuz flight, it can't possibly be three tourists on one Soyuz as the Russians and ISS partners would require a qualified Soyuz commander to ensure a safe docking. So you now have two tourists going up but where will they dock?
Let me explain. Next April and May Soyuz spacecraft will deliver six crew to the station, three with the April flight and three with the May flight
The April three will return in October and two weeks after they have landed a crew of three will launch to the ISS, returning the station compliment to six. The May crew return in November and a replacement crew launch that month also. This is the transport operation that the ISS partners have agreed
That means that from 2010 any private Soyuz flight has a two week window four times a year when a docking port will be available at ISS. But this does not mean a 14-day trip as flight rules regarding arrivals and departures require a period of time between each and so I would guess that the flight is more likely to stick to the 10-day tourist mission that has previously occured
On the price, the customers will have to pay, for a private flight, for an Energia Soyuz spacecraft and its Samara Space Center Soyuz booster plus all the ground ops and launch control and flight management, there and back, and the post-mission recovery from the Steppes and the hire of a Soyuz commander for ten-days at least - assuming the commander does not require extra training. You can see that this is not going to be $30 million per tourist, more like $50 million plus!
I hope to get more details soon as I will call Space Adventures to write a story for Flight International magazine
Just quickly coming back to the idea of buying a NASA seat on Soyuz. I think it is quite clear from the agreed method of transporting the six ISS crew that if you give a spare seat on a Soyuz going up in 2011, or 2010 or 2009, then that person is not coming down for months. So unless the Russians have been prepared to sell a six month stay at the ISS I can't see how this can happen
It's time for more of those news bites and today I am writing this blog entry from San Diego, California no less
I had not spotted this before on the FAA website but this leaflet is about safety standards for commercial spaceflight
NASA Johnson Space Center has a nice sketch of an Orion crew exploration vehicle with a very small man on the model's base to give it scale - and they're going to squeeze six into that thing?
The European Space Agency is offering free parabolic flights to students
S P Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation Energia has a photo story about the visit of US Congressman Rorabacher and also reports the Italian space agency president Giovanni Bignami's meeting with Energia's first vice president and first deputy general-designer Nikolai Zelenshchikov
And finally Russia's Federal Space Agency has a picture story about its head, Anatoly Perminov meeting the first women to go into space, Valentina Tereshkova (see translation here)
It would be huge if a private company could buy a Soyuz rocket outright & staff it with a pilot & 2 tourists. It also puts SpaceX out of business. The increased flight rate would reduce the cost per flight. Even if the cost goes from $20 million in 2000 to $50 million in 2011, what dollar denominated commodity hasn't tripled in price since 2000?
What has occured to me is that to make use of the two week windows I mentioned the tourists would be launching at the same time as the ascending ISS crew. So they are looking at a double launch scenario and I dont know what multi launch pad ops for manned flight Baikonur has.
As for your comment on SpaceX, you might be a bit premature in predicting its death!
As I understand it, Space Adventures and the Russians expect this to be an extra Soyuz that's out of the crew rotation. It would be the fifth Soyuz in the yearly production line. Jim Oberg helped me work through this a bit more ... and if the Russians can really turn out five Soyuzes, there might still be surplus capacity for the paying passengers. But right now the increased Soyuz production is a big question, and it takes about 2.5 years for the Soyuz fabrication process. So it's not a slam-dunk that that extra Soyuz will even be available. Then there's the question of where you park it ...
I remember the tug of war over Soyuzes and Progresses that doomed Mir in 2000-2001 ... and I also see that AP has a story with some not-exactly-sunny quotes from a NASA space station manager. All in all, I'll be interested to hear what you find out, Rob.
P.S.: I hope you're tracking the final episodes of "Battlestar Galactica." ;-)
Hi Alan,
Well I rang the number on the press release and left a message asking for an interview! Maybe I will get somewhere tomorrow?
Certainly the current increase to four Energia Soyuz a year is, as I understand it, being blamed in part for the quality dip that has led to the reentry problems.
I am not sure adding one more without substantial financial benefits is going to be welcomed by Energia and Samara Space Center. How fast can they churn out Soyuz boosters as well? Like sausages? Thanks for the tip, I'll checkout that AP story.
Hey, season finale is on this Friday! My bet is on you Alan being the fifth member of the final five...
I hadn't even thought of the port issue; The only unused port I can think of is the one on top of Zvezda where Pirs will be moved to, if they build/fly the last Russian module. I think it's never been used up until this point in the program. The flight during the crew breaks in spring and fall would just seem to be intrinsically flawed. If the Multipurpose Laboratory Module flies (have the Russians mentioned anything more about the idea of flying MLM this year or next?), that would give them as many as three ports to use where one exists today, and would greatly expand the ability to have Russian launched visitors.
My main question is what this will cost in terms of manpower, planning and time for Russia, NASA and the other partners. Docking a spacecraft to ISS is no trivial matter. A lot of planning and coordination. Not to mention the supplies used up in any sort of a long visit. Soyuz has limited cargo capability. Are the revenues going to offset those costs? Or does Russia most of the profits?
This has been the whole issue with space tourism to ISS. Yes, the Russian get money, but this is a really expensive research facility that taxpayers paid $100 billion to build and maintain it. Instead of having astronauts up there getting flight experience and doing work, you've got these joyriding billionaires floating around doing whatever they want.
I couldn't agree more Mojo. They already say they need a Soyuz pilot aboard. Docking with ISS although it would be on the Russian side of the station could require both mission controls, Korolev and Houston, just as ESA's ATV does. How much will NASA charge for that? I left another message for Space Adventures to get an interview today but no joy.
I couldn't disagree more with MoJo.
Space Adventures announced this mission on their 10th Anniversary, which means that they have taken tremendous risks over the last 10 years to get to the point of maturity where they can take an additional massive risk to finance their own $90 Million Soyuz mission to the ISS. Space Adventures has validated the $100 Billion that NASA and other federal government agencies have spent on the ISS by demonstrating that there is a market, at $45 Million per customer to travel to a manned space station.
NASA, in its most recent contract with the Russians (early 2007), paid about $45 Million per NASA Astronaut, and $90 Million per Soyuz (i.e. 2 NASA Astronauts per Soyuz), for transportation to and from the ISS. Space Adventures is simply taking a huge risk to demonstarte that the commercial market will also pay for this as well.
This is a validation for NASA, because it instantly answers the question of "What do we get for the $100 Billion spent on the ISS". What we have now is a new market for commercial companies to exploit.
Over time, commercial companies will accomplish what NASA has done for much less money. As an example, Bigelow and SpaceX are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in the infrastructure to support customers going to a commercial space station at $15 Million per customer. Do you think that they would have made these investments without the benefit of NASA's ISS investment or without witnessing what Space Adventres has done with dramatically less financial resources (than SpaceX, Bigelow, or NASA)?
The people working for Bigelow are not wealthy Billionaire space tourists and they are not elite NASA Astronauts. The people who work for Bigelow, however, can dream that they may be able to travel into space for free as professional Astronauts providing a lower cost service to their customers.
The whole point of NASA is to lead extremely expensive and risky aerospace projects until others can follow (or for some other national purpose).
I can not disagree enough with MoJo, because this kind of thinking would suggest that NASA built the ISS for NASA and not for the rest of us. We own NASA, we own the ISS, and it is wonderful that a commercial company is playing within the rules established by NASA and Roscosmos to expand manned spaceflight to more than just a few NASA and Roscosmos civil servants.