Jay Penn and Charles Lindley of Aerospace Corp. in California designed a new system for launching passengers into space.
Space flights may be affordable and popular, so space could become a tourist destination. This is what two American scientists say. According to calculations published in New Scientist magazine, a flight to space could cost 15 thousand dollars, a fraction of a percent of the current price.
So far, two people have flown into space who paid for the ticket and were not sent on behalf of one government or another. Dennis Tito and Mark Shettleworth paid $20 million to spend a few days aboard the International Space Station. However, the exclusivity associated with space tourism is about to change. Two scientists - Jay Penn and Charles Lindley from Aerospace Corp. in California designed a new system for launching passengers into space. According to them they will use a two-stage system.
A reusable launch vehicle would carry a smaller spacecraft to the edge of the atmosphere, then return to Earth for refueling. The spacecraft will continue to a space station in orbit around the Earth. The passengers will get off and others will return with the vehicle to Earth. This method will allow the space vehicles to make 9,500 flights a year, compared to only ten flights in the space shuttles. At a price of 15 thousand dollars per passenger, it will be possible to return the investment within six years after the start of the project.
This is a new type of spacecraft that will be cheap to maintain, and will require only about dozens of engineers and not the thousands required today to maintain the shuttles, which also perform things that were beyond their planned capacity. They also propose changing the fuel source from liquid hydrogen to paraffin, which would reduce costs considerably.
The two estimate that it will take seven years to develop and build the new system.
