E-Paper
Boeing’s new avatar: space tourism
The future of commercial space travel brightened on Wednesday with an announcement by Boeing that it plans to build rockets and capsules to carry space tourists to the international space station and later elsewhere in space.
The future of commercial space travel brightened on Wednesday with an announcement by Boeing that it plans to build rockets and capsules to carry space tourists to the international space station and later elsewhere in space.
The aerospace giant has tied up with Space Adventures Ltd to launch people into low earth orbit by 2015.
Brewster Shaw, Boeing’s vice president and general manager of space exploration, said the agreement “creates another opportunity to jump-start the human migration to space.”
Boeing is also in the running to provide low-cost commercial transport to the space station for NASA astronauts — a initiative pushed by President Barack Obama but which has run into opposition in Congress, and especially the House.
Space Adventures has sent seven private space travelers to the space station on Soyuz capsules, most recently at a cost of about $40 million for one seat.
Company chairman Eric Anderson said the link-up with Boeing will not make future space travel cheap, but it can make it less costly than it is now.
"With our customer experience and Boeing’s heritage in human spaceflight, our goal is not only to benefit the individuals who fly to space,” he said. It is “also to help make the resources of space available to the commercial sector by bringing the value from space back to Earth.”
James Cameron, are you listening? In Association with the Washington Post
