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Tourist flights
"Greg \(Strider\) Moore" wrote:
"Alain Fournier" wrote in message news Le Dec/3/2017 à 6:34 AM, Fred J. McCall a écrit : "Greg \(Strider\) Moore" wrote: "Jeff Findley" wrote in message ... In article , says... Jeff Findley wrote: In article , says... I wanted to follow up with this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CST-100_Starliner I was reading this earlier tonight and came across "As of 2014, the CST-100 was to include one space tourist seat, and the Boeing contract with NASA allows Boeing to price and sell passage to low-Earth orbit on that seat." and "Part of the agreement with NASA allows Boeing to sell seats for space tourists. Boeing proposed including one seat per flight for a space flight participant at a price that would be competitive with what Roscosmos charges tourists.[32]" This leads to: https://www.reuters.com/article/boei...0RI2XY20140917 Makes sense, and I'm all for it. If NASA doesn't need the seat, why not let the commercial crew provider sell the seat to someone else? Does SpaceX also get this deal or just Boeing? Since Dragon V2 can be configured to carry up to seven people, just what would allowing 'spare' seats to be sold to tourists mean? You'd think the deal would (eventually) apply to both suppliers. I don't see how NASA could allow Boeing to do this yet deny SpaceX the same deal if they requested it. I haven't seen anything about SpaceX other than they may fly with fewer than 7 simply for more upmass payload. What I recall reading was that NASA was going to impose a four seat maximum on any flights for NASA, regardless of what the vehicle COULD do. But it does open the question and changes my mind. It does appear NASA has accepted the concept of tourists visiting ISS again. But only one and only if one of their pet contractors (Boeing) delivers them. (which means time to add another Bigelow module ;-) What they have now isn't a real Bigelow module; it's a closet being used for testing. Time to add a REAL Bigelow module. I'm not quite sure about that. It's only the word "add" that I'm not sure about. Wouldn't it be better to have a Bigelow module independent from ISS? You know, a space-hotel. So long as it's a module attached to ISS, you will have space agencies from multiple countries arguing about what is permissible to do in the module. I fully expect that within 6-8 years. BUT, this discussion was in the context of what to do with the tourists that apparently will be flying to the ISS. NASA would ideally like to keep them out of the way. So a full size Bigelow module a few windows a little privacy, and they're all set. This would actually be a great way to manage it. A single B330 would allow almost doubling the crew of ISS from 6+1 to 12+1 and increase pressurized volume of the station by around 35%. The module contains all the support required for a crew of 6, so the only additional drain on station resources would be for the additional supplies required. A commercial provider could simply build that cost into the price of the tourist 'ticket' and bring up the extra supplies on its own money. All that being said, Bigelow may have gone to the Dark Side, having made a partnership agreement with ULA. -- "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." --George Bernard Shaw |
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