Sunday Times 2
Boeing’s ‘space taxi’ includes seat for a tourist
View(s):CAPE CANAVERAL Fla. (Reuters) – Boeing Co’s (BA.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) proposal to develop a so-called space taxi for NASA astronauts includes a seat for paying tourists to fly to the International Space Station, the company’s program manager said on Wednesday, a first for a U.S. space program.
NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik prepares to enter Boeing's CST-100 spacecraft (Reuters)
The $4.2 billion, five-year contract allows Boeing to sell rides to tourists, Boeing Commercial Crew Program Manager John Mulholland told Reuters, adding that the price would be competitive with what the Russian space agency now charges to fly tourists to the orbital outpost.
“Part of our proposal into NASA would be flying a Space Adventures spaceflight participant up to the ISS,” Mulholland said, referring to a Virginia-based space tourism company that brokers travel aboard Russian Soyuz capsules.
Now that Boeing has won a share of NASA’s space taxi contract, “we hope … to start working with the ISS program to make it happen,” he said. “We think it would be important to help spur this industry.”
Space Adventures is scheduled in January to begin training British singer Sarah Brightman for a 10-day visit to the station, a trip costing $52 million, according to Tom Shelley, president of Space Adventures.
Brightman is slated to become the eighth paying passenger to travel to the station, a $100 billion research complex that flies about 260 miles (418 km) above Earth.
Boeing’s first test launch of the taxi is not expected until 2017.