Excalibur Almaz To Offer Commercial Orbital Flights 76
xp65 alerts to the plans of an international consortium called Excalibur Almaz Limited to open up a new era of private orbital space flight for commercial customers. The group, consisting of Russian, US, and Japanese companies, will use a formerly top-secret Soviet re-entry vehicle called Almaz to carry paying research crews on one-week missions into Earth orbit by 2013. This ambition represents a large step beyond the sub-orbital flight market so far targeted by most other private space companies. "Excalibur has raised 'tens of millions of dollars' to initiate what will become a several hundred million dollar program, [CEO] Dula tells Spaceflight Now. He has spent more than 20 years eying this specific Almaz program... He also says 'the business plan closes' generating profits within a few years. His surveys have found research and science customers for space missions that are not tourist hops, but less demanding than ISS operations."
Excellent! (Score:2, Funny)
I'll go buy myself a ticket as soon as the proceeds from my uncle's estate come in, which should be any day now. Who knew, I had a Nigerian prince for an uncle. Small world, eh?
formerly top-secret Soviet re-entry vehicle (Score:3, Funny)
How does a pathetic rip off of a Gemini design qualify as a top secret re-entry vehicle?
What was secret about it? Which Nasa subcontractor they paid ?
Re:Flights in 2013; astronaut Leroy Chiao is VP (Score:3, Funny)
I suspect that there are people who would pay extra for a flight where they had the opportunity to shoot something down.
Excalibur? (Score:4, Funny)
Just because some watery tart lobs a spaceship at you is no basis for a space program.
Re:Nice if this was true (Score:3, Funny)
Re:You Obviously Are Unaware Of (Score:3, Funny)
So you argument against soviet "tech" sucking is that they were dumb enough to not notice that one of their physicist/mathematicians had laid out a great way to do stealth and instead of doing it let the Americans stumble across his work 20 years later and do it.
That seems like an argument against their "tech" if anything.
Re:Flights in 2013; astronaut Leroy Chiao is VP (Score:4, Funny)