It’s SpaceX’s first private charter flight
to the orbiting lab after two years of carrying astronauts there for NASA.
Arriving at the space station Saturday will
be an American, Canadian and Israeli who run investment, real estate and other
companies. They’re paying $55 million apiece for the rocket ride and
accommodations, all meals included.
Russia has been hosting tourists at the
space station — and before that the Mir station — for decades. Just last fall,
a Russian movie crew flew up, followed by a Japanese fashion tycoon and his
assistant.
NASA is finally getting into the act, after
years of opposing space station visitors.
“It was a hell of a ride and we’re looking
forward to the next 10 days,” said former NASA astronaut and chaperone Michael
Lopez-Alegria on reaching orbit.
The visitors’ tickets include access to all
but the Russian portion of the space station — they’ll need permission from the
three cosmonauts on board. Three Americans and a German also live up there.
Lopez-Alegria plans to avoid talking about
politics and the war in Ukraine while he’s at the space station.
“I honestly think that it won’t be awkward.
I mean maybe a tiny bit,” he said. He expects the “spirit of collaboration will
shine through.”
The private Axiom Space company arranged
the visit with NASA for its three paying customers: Larry Connor of Dayton,
Ohio, who runs the Connor Group; Mark Pathy, founder and CEO of Montreal’s
Mavrik Corp.; and Israel’s Eytan Stibbe, a former fighter pilot and founding
partner of Vital Capital.
Before the launch, their enthusiasm was
obvious: Stibbe did a little dance when he arrived at the rocket at Kennedy
Space Center.
SpaceX and NASA have been upfront with them
about the risks of spaceflight, said Lopez-Alegria, who spent seven months at
the space station 15 years ago.
“There’s no fuzz, I think, on what the
dangers are or what the bad days could look like,” Lopez-Alegria told The
Associated Press before the flight.
Each visitor has a full slate of
experiments to conduct during their stay, one reason they don’t like to be
called space tourists.
“They’re not up there to paste their nose
on the window,” said Axiom’s co-founder and president, Michael Suffredini, a
former NASA space station program manager.
The three businessmen are the latest to
take advantage of the opening of space to those with deep pockets. Jeff Bezos’
rocket company Blue Origin is taking customers on 10-minute rides to the edge
of space, while Virgin Galactic expects to start flying customers on its rocket
ship later this year.
Friday‘s flight is the second private
charter for Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which took a billionaire and his guests on a
three-day orbit ride last year.
Axiom is targeting next year for its second
private flight to the space station. More customer trips will follow, with
Axiom adding its own rooms to the orbiting complex beginning in 2024. After
about five years, the company plans to detach its compartments to form a
self-sustaining station — one of several commercial outposts intended to
replace the space station once it’s retired and NASA shifts to the moon.
At an adjacent pad during Friday’s launch:
NASA’s new moon rocket, which is awaiting completion of a dress rehearsal for a
summertime test flight.
As a gift for their seven station hosts,
the four visitors are taking up paella and other Spanish cuisine prepared by
celebrity chef José Andrés. The rest of their time at the station, NASA’s
freeze-dried chow will have to do.
The automated SpaceX capsule is due back
with the four on April 19.
Connor is honoring Ohio’s air and space
legacy, taking up a fabric swatch from the Wright brothers’ 1903 Kitty Hawk
flyer and gold foil from the Apollo 11 command module from the Neil Armstrong
Air and Space Museum in Wapakoneta.
Only the second Israeli in space, Stibbe
will continue a thunderstorm experiment begun by the first — Ilan Ramon, who
died aboard shuttle Columbia in 2003. They were in the same fighter pilot
squadron.
Stibbe is carrying copies of recovered
pages of Ramon’s space diary, as well as a song composed by Ramon’s musician
son and a painting of pages falling from the sky by his daughter.
“To be a part of this unique crew is a
proof for me that there’s no dream beyond reach,” he said.