First Fully Civilian Flight To Space Station Moves Forward With NASA Contract

NASA and Houston-based Axiom Space have signed a "mission order" setting the stage for four civilians to visit the International Space Station early next year, the first fully commercial flight to the orbiting lab complex, agency managers said Monday. CBS News reports: Axiom's "AX-1" mission and an upcoming charity-driven flight to low-Earth orbit, both aboard SpaceX Crew Dragon capsules, represent "a renaissance in U.S. human spaceflight," said Phil McAlister, NASA's director of commercial spaceflight development. "I think that's the perfect word for what we're experiencing," he said of the growing commercial space market, which includes the anticipated certification of Boeing's CST-100 Starliner and upcoming sub-orbital flights by Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic. "This is a real inflection point, I think, with human spaceflight."

Axiom Space, led by Mike Suffredini, NASA's former space station program manager, announced last year that it plans to launch a four-man crew to the space station aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule. The launch is currently targeted for a January timeframe. Axiom Vice President Mike Lopez-Alegria, a former NASA astronaut and space station commander, will serve as commander of the AX-1 mission, which is expected to last about 10 days. Joining him will be Larry Connor, an American entrepreneur, Canadian investor and philanthropist Mark Pathy and Israeli investor Eytan Stibbe, a former fighter pilot.

Lopez-Alegria on Monday told reporters that the crew will participate in centrifuge training and flights to simulate weightlessness starting next week, followed by a camping trip to Alaska in July for "bonding and leadership training." Lopez-Alegria and Connor, the mission pilot, will begin SpaceX flight training shortly thereafter before the entire crew begins space station familiarization at the Johnson Space Center in October. [...] Axiom is not paying list price for the AX-1 mission, in part because planning began before the new price guidelines were determined and because the company will be providing services to NASA that the agency would otherwise have to pay for. The mission order announced Monday covers just $1.69 million. Additional agreements remain to be negotiated.

No top to the atmosphere [Re:I hope they crash]

[XXongo]

You DO understand that the ISS is still in the Earth's atmosphere, yes?

Well, I suppose technically that's true, since the atmospheric density exponentially decays with altitude, there really isn't any place that is "above" the atmosphere. The moon is still in the Earth's atmosphere, too, by that calculation.

After a while the Earth's atmosphere merges smoothly into the sun's atmosphere, but there's not any dividing line you can call the "top" to the atmosphere.

Re:

[Applehu Akbar]

Space nutter reporting for duty. The ultimate problem with the "do it all with robots" argument is latency. The farther you go from Earth, the longer the turnaround time gets to be for issuing a command, getting feedback on it and acting on the information to send the next command. You can operate a robot at great distances either by making it very simple (Pioneer, Voyager) or by increasing its local intelligence, as in the Mars rovers. We are doing an impressing amount with the local-intelligence approach,

Re:

[pacinpm]

You are thinking about RC - remotely controlled machine. Robots require autonomy so they are immune to communication delays.

Re:I hope they crash

[AmiMoJo]

The very first space tourist was actually a Japanese journalist, with his flight to Mir being paid for by the network. It was a for-profit TV event, but at least it was educational too.

Re:

[h33t l4x0r]

No, there was an American teacher before that, things didn't go so well, unfortunately.

Re:I hope they crash

[AmiMoJo]

She wasn't a tourist though, as in McAuliffe's ride wasn't paid for by a third party. It was a NASA programme.

Akiyama flew in 1990, and spent a week on Mir. That made him the first paid civilian passenger into space, as well as a number of other firsts. TBS paid for it.

Re:

[godel_56]

No, there was an American teacher before that, things didn't go so well, unfortunately.

I don't think she actually made it into space.

Wait, too soon?

Re: I hope they crash

[WindBourne]

The idea is to lower the cost of space. The only way is to get multiple nations, companies, and yes, tourist going. These ppl will make it possible for private space stations to go up and allow training for lunar missions, while also lowering costs.

Re:

[AlexHilbertRyan]

> The idea is to lower the cost of space. The only way is to get multiple nations, companies, and yes, tourist going. These ppl will make it possible for private space stations to go up and allow training for lunar missions, while also lowering costs.
No the idea is for some corporation to make money while the tax payer pays the big bills. Thats the american way, do i need to remind you of other corporations and ceos ?
Only a fool believes in the one liners you have shared.

Re:

[AlexHilbertRyan]

Its not done for entertainment, its done so SOME can say they have BEEN.

Re: I hope they crash

[WindBourne]

Idiot. The whole idea is to drive down the cost of space. The more trips, the cheaper science will be. As it gets cheaper, manufacturing can start up, which will drive it even lower.

There'll be a time we "have" to go to space

[SpaghettiPattern]

There sill be a time where space traveling will be as affordable as flying. Most likely I will remain content with visiting my birth and my home country which happen to be adjacent.

Re:

[50000BTU_barbecue]

Guess how I know you're a programmer.

Hint: you don't have a clue about material end energy limits.

As a programmer you spend your entire life approaching problems with the perspective that whatever brilliant idea you come up with, it can be implemented with more CPU, more RAM, more storage; and for that last few decades, that's what happened.

The material world didn't follow that at the same rate. A Boeing 747 that first flew in 1969 crossed the Atlantic in six hours.

Just like today.

There's no way your space

Re:

[Dereck1701]

ISS is reaching the end of it's usable lifetime, and without public/investor interest it probably won't be replaced by anything even close to it's scale, if at all. If we want space stations of any kind its going to involve a much broader "customer" base (tourists, companies, universities, etc) and hopefully more of them to allow for economies of scale to bring down the costs. The bloated government spending that created ISS is unlikely to happen again anytime soon.

There will be music during the flight

[nospam007]

MC Hammer's "U Can't Touch This "

over and over again.

Need 2+ private space stations

[WindBourne]

NASA , under bridinstein/trump, fucked up the private space station contract. We need to get multiple private space stations going for LEO work and space training, so as to have competition, and for redundancy. Bigelow is the logical one, but SNC/ILC-dover also would be useful.

CO2

[Zigbigadoorlue]

This is just what our warming planet needs. Rich people finding a stupid way to send even more CO2 into our atmosphere. Gods, I don't even want to think about the embedded carbon for a trip to space.