Russians spice space tourism with 35-million offer

Science Features

By Pat Reber Jul 23, 2006, 16:25 GMT

Washington - Bored with just the flight to the International Space Station (ISS)? Soon, wealthy space tourists can take advantage of a new thrill offered by the Russian Federal Space Agency programme and its booking agent, Space Adventures: a spacewalk while orbiting 400 kilometres above the Earth. The price has been set at 35 million dollars, according to the website of Space Adventures, a company outside Washington D.C. that arranges the trips. The travel brochure on the Space Adventures website describes the basic journey like this: 'Orbital (Price: 20,000,000 dollars). Spend one week at the International Space Station orbiting the Earth. Includes six months of intense training, roundtrip transportation to the ISS, and a week's lodging in space.' That's the basic 10-day trip that Daisuke Enomoto, the Japanese businessman, has purchased for a September flight on a Russian Soyuz craft to the space station. He'll be the fourth paying customer to ride into space with the Russians. But for an added 15 million dollars, future tourists will have the option of nearly doubling the time in space, to 16 to 18 days, and spending 90 minutes outside the ISS. Russian space officials gave the matter considerable thought and study before approving the idea, said Alexei Krasnov, director of the Russian manned spaceflight department. 'We have come to the conclusion that subject to personal physical and psychological capabilities and with the completion of additional specific cosmonaut training, spaceflight participants could potentially perform' an extra-vehicular activity (EVA), he was quoted as saying in a Space Adventures press notice. The US NASA, which takes a dim view of private space tourism but tolerates it to help the Russians finance their space programme, said it had not been told about plans to expand the private offering. NASA and the 14 other ISS international partners must approve of the space walk idea, the Houston Chronicle reported. Private space-walkers will have to spend an extra month after six months of basic training to prepare for the EVA, and will wear a Russian space suit, according to the Space.com report. The tourists would exit and re-enter through the Russian portal on the ISS - not the NASA portal. 'It's the next logical step and one of the premier experiences of spaceflight,' Eric Anderson, the travel agency's president and chief executive officer, was quoted as saying by the Houston Chronicle Saturday. 'We've had several potential clients, and previous clients express an interest in doing a spacewalk. It was really only a matter of time.' Private sky walkers would be escorted by a Russian cosmonaut. A number of retired astronauts are connected to the Space Adventures firm, including Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin; US shuttle astronauts Sam Durrance, Robert Gobson, Tom Jones, Byron Lichtenberg, Norm Thagard, Kathy Thornton, Pierre Thuot and Charles Walker; Skylab astronaut Owen Thornton; and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Usachev. © 2006 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur

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