Space tourism is promising to become a lucrative business. After Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic in cooperation with Scaled Composites (Mojave, CA), another venture group announced to enter the commercial space flight market.
The Boeing Company and Space Adventures have established a memorandum of agreement regarding the marketing of anticipated transportation services to destinations in low Earth orbit (LEO) on Boeing commercial crew spacecraft.
According to the news reports, Space Adventures will market passenger seats on commercial flights aboard the Boeing Crew Space Transportation-100 (CST-100) spacecraft to LEO.
The potential customers for excess seating capacity include private individuals, companies, non-governmental organizations, and U.S. federal agencies other than NASA. Boeing plans to use the CST-100 to provide crew transportation to the International Space Station (ISS) and future commercial LEO platforms.
"By combining our talents, we can better offer safe, affordable transportation to commercial spaceflight customers," explained Brewster Shaw, vice president and general manager of Boeing's Space Exploration division. "To date, all commercial flights for private spaceflight participants to the ISS have been contracted by Space Adventures. If NASA and the international partners continue to accommodate commercial spaceflight participants on ISS, this agreement will be in concert with the NASA administrator's stated intent to promote space commerce in low Earth orbit."
Both companies have not yet set a price per seat for spaceflight participants, but will do so when full-scale development is under way. Boeing tirelessly continues to advance its design for the CST-100 spacecraft under NASA’s Commercial Crew Development Space Act Agreement. The Boeing spacecraft, which can carry seven people, will be able to fly on multiple launch vehicles and is expected to be operational by 2015.
"We are excited about the potential to offer flights on Boeing's spacecraft," emphasized Eric Anderson, co-founder and chairman of Space Adventures. "With our customer experience and Boeing’s heritage in human spaceflight, our goal is not only to benefit the individuals who fly to space, but also to help make the resources of space available to the commercial sector by bringing the value from space back to Earth."
Space Adventures has already successfully contracted and flown seven spaceflight participants on eight missions to the International Space Station.
The venture has some major competitive advantage: Space Adventures, headquartered in Vienna, Va., is the only company that provides orbital spaceflight opportunities to the world marketplace. The company offers a spectrum of programming that ranges from terrestrial weightless flights to orbital missions, flights to the edge of space, and a historic return to the Moon. Space Adventures' clients have spent over 2,000 hours in space, traveling altogether over 35 million miles.
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