Prepare the towels, transfer between 7,000 and 20 million dollars to the company Space Adventures (there is also a branch in Israel!) and you are on your way to a luxury vacation in space or at least to levitation in zero gravity conditions. In case you were worried: there are promotions for employee councils and you can earn points in El Al's 'frequent flyer' account
Let's say you ran out. Let's say you hit the start-up and managed to get into the top XNUMX even before the gates closed. Let's assume that you have already purchased the duplex in Manhattan, the triplex in Arsov and the Kit Residence on the side of the mountain in Vacha Rosh Pina. Let's say you've already bungee jumped from a crane into radioactive oxidation pools, waded with piranhas, skydived off an Amazon cliff into the mouth of an anaconda, and third world sex tourism makes you yawn.
What will you do for new thrills? or. You can, for example, pick up the phone to Iron Aliron, the entrepreneur behind 'Space Pioneers', the Israeli representative of the 'Space Adventures Global' company, and find out what the company offers to those who have beaten the puncher and tend to get bored easily. The global company, founded by Eric Anderson (CEO and President), started as a routine challenge adventure company called 'Space Voyages' in Arlington, Virginia, and over time became the leading address for the attraction appetites of the world's wealthy.
Today, the company offers its "elite travelers" to experience space as only 500 people have experienced it before them. Its range of products ranges from flights to the International Space Station on a space shuttle - or a space honeymoon for a couple for several tens of millions of dollars - to loops in a MiG plane, flights to the edge of the atmosphere and the edge of space, zero gravity experiences, training camps for cosmonauts and dives to the Titanic, all at prices ranging from tens to hundreds of thousands dollars. There are also promotions for employee committees (for example, a sub-orbital flight for $90 per employee, provided you are an employee of a corporation participating in the promotion).
Until recently, the whole space tourism thing sounded rather fantastic. Space was the preserve of NASA professionals and the Russian space agency's human all-terrain vehicles. Apart from them who wanted only rusting space shuttles and goal-oriented tycoons like Dennis Tito and Mark Shuttleworth, who stuck to their guts like a scumbag. Who believed in the predictions about flying space hotels, to which we will take off for a week with full board combined with space sports activities and Agado guides with cosmonaut training?
But this month, private entrepreneur Brett Rotten launched his private space vehicle for the first civilian space flight and played the cards. The historic flight, which launched and returned a space vehicle in usable condition, launched the first real option for futuristic space tourism. Let's see what lies ahead.
The vacation packages
vomit in a centrifuge
Even in the current field conditions, even before the five stars of Hilton (which plans to establish a chain of flying space hotels at a cost of about 100 million pounds), there will be those who prefer space sickness over three days in Antalya. Those who have an extra 20 million dollars and half a year free, are invited to go, for example, for a deal of ten days of accommodation, plus flights to the International Space Station in a squeaky Russian space shuttle, based on availability.
"Space Adventures is looking for candidates interested in participating in one of the greatest once-in-a-lifetime experiences," the company announces. "Seats aboard the historic SA-1 flight, scheduled for launch in early 2005 from the Konor Island Cosmodrome in the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan, are now being sold for a base price of $20 million each!"
Also included in the price is a fun cosmonaut training package: half a year of a military training regimen at the Yuri Gagarin Space Center in a remote guy in Russia, colon examinations and vomiting in centrifugal facilities, and all the limousines, nightlife and luxury restaurants of Moscow you can afford.
Who's in the customer club? An-Sync frontman Lance Bays wanted to be. About two years ago, he enrolled in the program and underwent four months of training as a cosmonaut at the Russian Space Center. Bays even informed his fans that he was going to drag himself into space with his guitar and give them a performance from there. But when he failed to raise the full amount needed, he was shamefully kicked out of the program and instead a 150 kg container was sent containing personal belongings of the team and spare parts.
On the other hand, Dennis Tito and Mark Shuttleworth flew and had fun (although the sixty-year-old Tito suffered from space sickness - nausea and diarrhea), and a similar contract has already been signed with technology entrepreneur Dr. Greg Olsen and another space enthusiast, who have started training.
Abbreviated process: touch the space
Those who demand immediate gratification and have difficulty with the grueling training workshop, can go for a shortened process of four days of training and a suborbital space flight. In this case, the space vehicle will take off to the height of space, 100 km, and perform a parabolic arc without gaining enough speed to enter orbit around the earth. For $102, the adventurer will be able to register as someone who touched outer space as an unofficial astronaut (there are only official ones at NASA).
"It is worth noting that at the end of this impressive space experience, which lasts 60 to 90 minutes," the company announces, "we will give each participant official 'Adventures in Space' astronaut wings and lifetime membership in the exclusive space club of 'Adventures in Space'." Over a hundred registered passengers have already covered the payment in full, even though the space vehicle and the launch date have not yet been finalized. Right now it's somewhere between 2005 and 2006.
The millennial tailors who are willing to settle for a photo-op against the background of the earth, can reach the edge of the atmosphere in a MiG 25 for only 18,995 thousand dollars. About 9,000 people have already tried it. There are also stunt flights in the MiG 23, for those with a strong stomach and a tight pocket, who will be able to enjoy a selection of rondels and loops in the air for a modest amount of 8,995 dollars. Those who are more interested in the rookie experience are invited to play cosmonaut in all stages of training, plus the medical tests (including bowels!), a space suit measurement, a MiG 25 flight to the edge of space and spending time in a centrifuge and a floatation chamber - only $200 for the full package.
30 seconds of fun
But those who want the real fun, levitation in zero gravity conditions, are invited to feel weightless in an Ilyushin 76 plane that has been emptied of its contents and padding, which will go on a parabolic flight that will last about an hour. During this, the plane stops its engines, glides over the highest point of its route and begins a dive, during which a feeling of weightlessness is felt and the passengers of the plane experience a feeling of free fall. Later, the plane slowly exits its dive, and when all the people are safely on the padded floor, the pilot repeats the maneuver.
Each parabola requires an airspace between 25 and 35 thousand feet. The passengers experience between 28 and 30 seconds of zero gravity during each parabola, and can float during it like a zeppelin in the space of the plane. During one flight, between eight and 12 parabolas are performed. This fun package can be had for an affordable price, $6,995. For the misers who believe that this is an excessive price for 30 seconds of fun, the company clarifies: "Thirty seconds of weightlessness sounds very little. However, for perspective, that's five times longer than the average bungee jump, and about the same amount of time it takes to free fall from an airplane; The only difference is you get to do it ten more times!”
For employers, the company offers the "Team Building - Reach for the Stars" route, under which ten of the company's employees (not including contractor employees) will be sent on a private charter flight of one and a half hours in an Alyoshin plane, which will also reach a state of zero gravity. The amount: 75 thousand dollars for ten people. "Incentives that corporations offer to their employees have been proven to be more useful than money in improving productivity," the company's website details. "Not only will your team feel the camaraderie and sense of accomplishment that comes with completing astronaut training, but you yourself will also experience the thrill of flipping, levitating and flying in zero gravity!"
The meteorites were eliminated
Spice Adventures also offers more mundane attractions. So far, several five-person expeditions have set out on a ten-day journey to the remains of the Titanic. The members of the expedition dived to a depth of 20 thousand feet, for about eight hours, in one of the only five private research submarines in the world that can reach this depth and are available to the company. The next expedition is planned for 2005, when one of the submarines will be freed from its research. The underwater journey will cost about 36 thousand dollars per participant.
Among the attractions that were shelved due to low demand: tours in Antarctica to look for meteorites ($50 per participant), tours to view moon-like craters in the California desert and more popular trips to the mountain in Hawaii, on which the world's largest telescope is located. Fun trips to space shuttle launch sites are still underway. of your choice.
the tourists
Space tycoons
Since the launch of the Russian Sputnik in 57, the conservative space industry has been controlled and funded by governments. The dissolution of the USSR also sealed the space race between the two great powers. Russia suddenly cut off the flow of billions to its space agency, and so it happened that one of the cosmonauts had to stay on board Mir six months beyond the planned, when Moscow was unable to raise the necessary amount to return him to his homeland. Mir was later disbanded, but the cash flow situation of Star City, the area where the offices of the Russian space agency and its test sites are located, worsened. To survive, the Russian space agency turned to commercial sources of income, such as an advertisement for the Pepsi-Cola company that was filmed with Russian cosmonauts in space. They prepared a similar advertisement for Tnuva milk.
In recent years, more than half of the Russian space agency's budget - only 114 million dollars in 2000, for example - came from various economic transactions. NASA's budget, by comparison, is more than a hundred times larger, 12.6 billion dollars a year.
The Russian hunger for Western money met the billionaire Denis Tito, who dreamed of flying into space since childhood. The company he owns, the large investment fund Wilshire & Co., has about 500 billion dollars at his disposal, and his personal fortune is estimated at about 200 million dollars. Close to the dissolution of the USSR, Tito approached the authorities in Moscow with a generous offer: millions of dollars in exchange for one plane ticket to space. "The Americans do not need this money", he claimed at the time. "If I had offered the amount to NASA, they would have refused. For them it is a drop in the ocean. But for the Russians, it's a lot of money for their space program."
Indeed, with Tito's money, Russia increased its annual space program budget by more than 17 percent, and in return launched him into space in April 2001, through the mediation of Space Adventures. This upset NASA, which tried to exclude Tito from training in its facilities. "Flying tycoons into space - this is not our idea of space tourism," clarified Dan Goldin, the director of NASA at the time. The professional reasons reeked of prestige struggles. Just as Russia was ahead of the USA in the space race and was the first to launch Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin, so it is ahead as the pioneer of space tourism.
Washington's attitude toward millionaire space trips has improved since then, but to be on the safe side, NASA has issued guidelines regarding the identity of the people who will be able to enter the space station, according to which the space tourist must be free of criminal or questionable backgrounds, clean of involvement in fraud, free of drugs or abnormal consumption of alcohol and free to organizations that may damage public trust in the space station. Below, criminals and mobsters are grounded.
Following Tito, the 2002-year-old South African billionaire Mark Shuttleworth, who made his fortune from information technologies, also took off into space in April 27, courtesy of the Russian Space Agency and under the auspices of Space Adventures. Two other tycoons have already signed up for a similar experience with Space Adventures, and the company's next goal is to launch a privately funded space flight to the International Space Station. The innovation this time, company president Anderson explained, is the special launch purchased to take a pair of tourists into space, and not as hitchhikers for a flight planned for other purposes.
Sex in space? Wait for confirmation
As is customary with charter flights, the departure date is only approximate - sometime in the beginning of 2005. This time, too, the intended tourists are required to part with 20 million dollars per passenger and test the strength of their intestines not only with medical examinations, but also with space training that will take place before the flight at the Russian Star City training center, before flying to the Russian launch base in Kazakhstan. The journey will last eight to ten days, of which six days will be spent in the space motel, the joint space station.
A dozen candidates have already shown interest, and they are undergoing tests for selection. "We would be very happy if the two who go out are a father and son," Anderson said at a press conference, "or a bride and groom, who go on a honeymoon in space."
The president of 'Space Pioneers', the Israeli representative of Space Adventures in Israel, Yaron Aliron, has been striving for years for this to be a kosher Jewish wedding in space. About two years ago, he located an Israeli couple who expressed their willingness to postpone their wedding date to 2005 and get married in space under the auspices of the company, which will raise the necessary $250 from various sponsorships. But the intended bride finally broke down and got married. After all, even having sex on her space honeymoon has yet to be finally approved by the space agency. But Eliron continues to search, and is currently preoccupied with the issue of flying the groom's rabbi. If the procedure turns out to be too complicated, Rabbi Shishyam may be found in an Internet flash wedding from Earth.
the aircraft
The goal: a ferry for the masses
Until that happens, the space tourism industry is being perfected. In view of the growing demand, Space Adventures plans to soon build a new spaceport, from which tourists will be launched on suborbital flights. These days they are looking for a suitable site there, and are considering sites in Australia, the Bahamas, Florida, Japan, Malaysia, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Singapore and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. "Securing the location of the space station will be an important step for Space Adventures," predicts Anderson. A space training center will be built in the port and additional space tourism activities will be conducted.
In Russia, which is still seeking to improve the cash flow for its space industry, a future successor to the old Soyuz space vehicle will enter service in 2010, which will mark 30 years of space launches. Clipper, the next vehicle, is considered more efficient: it weighs only 14.5 tons, and it can deviate from its planned course during the launch according to the decision of the crew. The Russians are planning to send delegations of tourists into space aboard the Clipper - two crew members and four space tourists per round. The Russians estimate that the increase in demand for space tourism may yield them a profit of about 80 million dollars per launch.
Ever since astronaut Alan Shepard took a short trip into space in 1961, the space shuttle has been considered the only means of launch that can be reused. In view of its complex and somewhat archaic technology and the need for numerous maintenance works between flights, the cost of a single launch of the shuttle amounts to a whopping half a billion dollars.
Accordingly, private development teams are currently competing to build an alternative aircraft that will reach space, meaning a minimum altitude of 100 kilometers, with three passengers inside, return to Earth and take off again two weeks later. The idea of the competition, called the x-prize, was born in 1996 in the mind of Peter Diamandis, an American businessman from St. Louis, who believed that the global aviation industry, whose annual turnover is estimated at approximately 300 billion dollars, owes a lot to the tradition of awarding awards to pioneers in the field of aviation. Diamandis' hero, Charles Lindbergh, won $25 in 1927 after crossing the Pacific Ocean in a plane built by private entrepreneurs without government assistance.
The aforementioned X-Prize, in the amount of ten million dollars, will be given to those who meet the challenge, with private funding only, until the year 2005, and its purpose, according to Diamandis, is to find a contemporary 'Lindberg' and to harness the best minds in the world to accelerate making space accessible to everyone, for tourism and recreation purposes. The condition of launching two flights within two weeks is intended to encourage the competitors to develop cheap and simple aircraft to maintain, which will eventually be able to fly into space with a frequency similar to that of a commercial airline.
Giant companies such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin, who currently exclusively control the launch vehicles into space, show no interest in developing means to launch middle-class tourists into space. Therefore, the financiers of the X Prize are betting that the generous compensation will inspire the creation of a 'shuttle for the masses' among visionary entrepreneurs.
The possibility of sending a person into a peripheral orbit in space was ruled out from the very beginning. To reach the point where gravity equals the centripetal force, the aircraft needs to move very fast (the shuttle, for example, reaches a speed of 28 km/h) and reach an altitude of at least 160 kilometers. This requires powerful engines and sophisticated control systems. But a suborbital flight, like the one performed by Shepherd, to an altitude of 100 km, is less complicated.
The Negev is ours
The enthusiastic supporters of the competition, some of whom also contributed money, include Tito, author of suspense books Tom Clancy, former head of NASA Daniel Goldin, former senator and astronaut John Glenn, writer Arthur C. Clarke, actor Tom Hanks and also Eric Lindbergh - his grandson of Charles Lindbergh.
24 groups of entrepreneurs from around the world joined the competition (among them an Israeli group), conceived original space vehicles - including special balloons, space planes, space rockets and more, and financed the planning and construction themselves. The prize is based on an intervention between the organizing company and a large insurance company, which promised to pay the amount to whoever succeeds in completing the task.
On June 21 of this year, about 3,000 people arrived in the Mojave Desert in the USA, to watch the SpaceShip One spacecraft designed and built by aviation pioneer Bret Rutten, which was piloted by 62-year-old Michael Melvin, a retired test pilot. A few hours later, the spacecraft became the first privately owned manned vehicle to reach the limit of space, i.e. to an altitude of 100 km, cruise a short period of time in space and return to Earth successfully.
The spaceship and the plane that carried it, the 'White Knight', are fully reusable. But will Rotten be able to repeat the success two more times before the end of the year, two weeks apart, with three space tourists? If so, he will rake in the full amount and lay the cornerstone for the space tourism industry. According to his private estimation, in about 12 years we will be able to travel to space at the prices of a pleasure cruise on a luxurious cruise ship.
Until that happens, the Israeli team in the competition is offering the space vehicle 'Negev'. The mechanical engineer Dov Chertripsky, who worked for an American airline before immigrating to Israel, and Oded Labell, who served in the Air Force as a flight test engineer, founded the ILAT company, which manages their operation. They were recently joined by space scientist Prof. Claude Vakanin, and the group designed a spherical space chamber, made of metal and complex materials. It is ten meters long, 2.5 meters in diameter, weighs 1.1 tons, and will be able to carry a weight of up to 270 kg.
The cell will be attached to a huge hot air balloon, which will bring it to a height of 80 thousand feet, about 26 km. At this height, according to a computer command, a rocket connected to the space chamber will be activated and launch it to a height of more than 100 km. After the spacecraft reaches the required height, it will return to Earth with a large parachute, and to soften the landing it will also be equipped with a special air bag.
Miles on El Al flights
This week a first agreement was also signed between Spice Adventures, mediated by Yaron Aliron, and an Israeli company. Following other airlines, including Lufthansa and United Airways, El Al also signed a cooperation agreement, according to which the purchaser of one of the Space Adventures attractions will be able to earn miles on El Al flights. Another deal is planned in the future, according to which El Al's 'frequent flyer' members will be able to convert miles to attractions offered by the company. Another Israeli company - a subsidiary of Skal Sport - closed an agreement with Spice Pioneers for a zero-gravity flight lottery for its customers. El Al also intends to start such a flight.
The Israeli branch
Saturn among the waves
If among the advisers of the global company Space Adventures you can find experienced astronauts, including Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon, then for the local branch, 'Space Pioneers', Eliron recruited advisers of the rank of astronaut Itzik Mayo and Dr. David Passig. Mayo is the combat navigator who trained with the late Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon as number two to fly the space shuttle Columbia. Dr. Passig is a future researcher (the only one in Israel with a doctorate in technological forecasting), head of the Department of Communication Technologies at Bar-Ilan University and advisor to the Commissioner for Future Generations in the Knesset.
Aliron, 35, a businessman and high-tech internet entrepreneur, is no less colorful than the field he represents. He serves as the vice president of the Israeli Space Association - an association concerned with the promotion of education for research in the field of space. As usual, he founded a start-up (in 96) that collapsed with the bursting of the bubble, and now he is busy with a new Internet venture. He is a fan of extreme sports, a sunburnt surfer, but also a bookworm.
As a child he was enthusiastic about the subject of space, and as a teenager he participated in science-seeking youth circles and astronomy and space exploration quizzes. In one of them he even reached the final stage, but lost the big prize - a trip to Cape Canaveral, to witness the launch of the space shuttle Challenger - which the two winners in the first places picked up. "But she exploded in the air", he comforts himself, "so it wasn't a fun spectacle".
His collaboration with Spice Adventures was created about five years ago. "Then I surfed waves in Hawaii. The star Saturn is drawn on my surfboard, and during one of the exercises, when the surfboard was pointing to the sky, I thought of founding a space tourism company, without knowing that one already existed. When I returned I inquired and discovered the company, and decided to join forces with them. Today they are the main agents for all the companies that will offer flights into space, but then they were a fairly new company, called Space Voyages. They proposed a future tourist flight into space, along with other extreme adventures and attractions to the Upper Millennium. What remains due to the growing demand are mainly space adventures. Regarding the space, everything then seems very illusory and preliminary. At that time there was talk of space vehicles that seemed still very far from reality. The thought that there would be a space vehicle that would be converted into a civilian aircraft, with all the facilities that would make the flight comfortable, and that could make repeated flights from Earth to space and back, was wild."
And does that sound reasonable to you?
"It spoke to me, and I was enthusiastic about the range of products that the company produces. I contacted them and established a good relationship with Eric Andersen, the founder of the company. We talked about space and science fiction like two amateurs meeting. Even then I thought that we were the pioneers of space tourism, and that in ten years we would be far from everyone else. All this fired my imagination. I read a lot - science fiction, psychology, philosophy, classic literature and even dictionaries. I have a phenomenal memory, I remember 3,500 phone numbers in my head and I like to sit and imagine things. In my opinion, everything starts with the thought.
"Today there are already a lot of ideas, one of which is to open places on the space shuttle to the general public. The time has come for space tourism to develop and lead to space traffic resembling the aerospace industry. In terms of flights to the moon, 40 years since Kennedy's speech and 30 years since man last set foot on the moon, people have invested more in an arms race, which could have destroyed the planet hundreds of times over, than all their investment in the future of the human race."
Aren't the space attractions a bit detached from Israeli existence, where people strive to return home safely from a bus ride?
"The future of this industry is not in Israel. Here everyone says that there are bigger troubles, which explode on us. Most of the public is far from it. In the US and around the world, the topic of space is in the ads. When there is a shuttle launch or an important event in space exploration, it is highlighted in the news release and the media. It is an industry of several tens of billions a year, and there are companies that manufacture satellites, launch vehicles, and the like. But I want Israel to join. If there are investors who like this area, I would be happy to talk to them. Besides, whoever buys a flight into space, or a suborbital flight, will win a towel. In the book 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy', Douglas Adams already explained that this is all the Hitchhiker of the Galaxy will need for his space tourism needs. He will wave it at passing spaceships."
What will the near future look like?
"In 25 years I see a hotel outside the earth, which will operate using the time-sharing method - like Club-Hotel Eilat, but for millionaires. It will be possible to purchase a unit for use for one week a year, including flights, for 25 years. Its price may range around two million dollars. The idea is that we will operate a hotel chain with three hotels: one for recreation, the second for space sports, and the third will be used for astronaut training - where the demands from tourists will be higher. A hotel guest will be able to practice space walking outside the hotel, or if they want to experience the perfect solitude, they can rent a two-seater rocket vehicle and take a tour around the hotel. Under the control of sophisticated navigational means he will be able to reach the middle of nowhere in space. And if his car gets stuck, he will be lost."
