Cancelled: British singer Sarah Brightman to be Russia’s next space tourist

[neilh]

How about: we've actually talked to NASA and gotten approval to fly private astronauts on the vacant seats when we start flying.

Anybody who believes that private astronauts are going to be flying to the ISS in the spare seats on commercial crew flights are living in a world of complete make believe.

Firstly, NASA hate tourists flying on the ISS. They only accept it via Soyuz simply because they have no choice but to do so - it is a Russian vehicle and the Russians can do what they like with it. So long as NASA has one iota of control over commercial crew flights (and they will, since they will be paying for it and it will be docking to the US segment), then we will never see tourists on ISS via commercial crew. Of far more value to NASA is extra cargo, which is what will occupy the mass/volume of the three unoccupied seats.

And secondly, since the "indirect handover" method will be used for commercial crew, which means one vehicle and crew will undock and land before the new crew launches and docks, tourist flights will be impossible anyway (unless the tourists want to stay for 6 months - which would consume far too much ISS resources).

That's really unfortunate. Is there anything that can be done to fix this?

[Space Pete]

That's really unfortunate. Is there anything that can be done to fix this?

No, not really.

Although, I disagree that it needs "fixing" - ISS is a science lab, not a hotel. I have nothing against space tourism, but it should be done on a dedicated platform, not a taxpayer-funded laboratory.

[Star One]

That's really unfortunate. Is there anything that can be done to fix this?

No, not really.

Although, I disagree that it needs "fixing" - ISS is a science lab, not a hotel. I have nothing against space tourism, but it should be done on a dedicated platform, not a taxpayer-funded laboratory.

The Russians would seem to disagree and they have just as much say in ISS as NASA.

I shan't even mention NASA's 'stellar' record on selling science space on ISS commercially.

[Borklund]

Helpless tourists on station would only detract from its purpose, not add to it. I'm with Pete on this one.

[QuantumG]

It's a shame that people are still talking about private astronauts as "tourists". Everyone who has flown with Space Adventures had paying work to do on the ISS. Richard Garriott says he came close to making a profit. Sarah Brightman almost certainly will.

It's not tourism just because the government isn't paying for the ride. If anything, that is.

[Star One]

It's a shame that people are still talking about private astronauts as "tourists". Everyone who has flown with Space Adventures had paying work to do on the ISS. Richard Garriott says he came close to making a profit. Sarah Brightman almost certainly will.

It's not tourism just because the government isn't paying for the ride. If anything, that is.

Very good point, tourism is really the wrong term to be used here.

[D_Dom]

Call it what you will, I think any "profit margin" will be better demonstrated by commercial flights to the Bigelow station. As Space Pete so accurately stated, ISS is a taxpayer funded laboratory.

[QuantumG]

Call it what you will, I think any "profit margin" will be better demonstrated by commercial flights to the Bigelow station. As Space Pete so accurately stated, ISS is a taxpayer funded laboratory.

Which obviously means the taxpayers have no right to use it?

[Star One]

Call it what you will, I think any "profit margin" will be better demonstrated by commercial flights to the Bigelow station. As Space Pete so accurately stated, ISS is a taxpayer funded laboratory.

Which obviously means the taxpayers have no right to use it?

Which might be seen by some taxpayers as elitist, even when applied to millionaires.

[woods170]

Call it what you will, I think any "profit margin" will be better demonstrated by commercial flights to the Bigelow station. As Space Pete so accurately stated, ISS is a taxpayer funded laboratory.

Correct. Note: Sarah Brightman is a UK citizen. Also note: Britain, as an ESA member state, never contributed any funding specifically to ISS. Even if taxpayers from the directly contributing member states were eligible for a visit to ISS, it would still exclude Sarah Brightman (and every other British taxpayer). No bucks, No Buck Rogers (sort of...)

Before somebody brings up Timothy Peake: he's flying to ISS as part of Britain's contributions to the ESA Human Spaceflight Program.

But this whole discussion is beyond that: the participating parties in the ISS agreement decide who get's access to ISS. However, NASA cannot veto a Russian decision or vice versa. So, if the Russians occasionally offer short stays at ISS for private spaceflight participants, there is not much NASA can do about it but hope the PSP's stay at ISS is as short as possible.

[neilh]

I wonder if NASA and the ISS could draw some inspiration from the DOE's successes with sharing resources at the National Labs with commercial research partners:

http://energy.gov/articles/tapping-our-commercial-potential-work-national-labs

[Star One]

Call it what you will, I think any "profit margin" will be better demonstrated by commercial flights to the Bigelow station. As Space Pete so accurately stated, ISS is a taxpayer funded laboratory.

Correct. Note: Sarah Brightman is a UK citizen. Also note: Britain, as an ESA member state, never contributed any funding specifically to ISS. Even if taxpayers from the directly contributing member states were eligible for a visit to ISS, it would still exclude Sarah Brightman (and every other British taxpayer). No bucks, No Buck Rogers (sort of...)

Before somebody brings up Timothy Peake: he's flying to ISS as part of Britain's contributions to the ESA Human Spaceflight Program.

But this whole discussion is beyond that: the participating parties in the ISS agreement decide who get's access to ISS. However, NASA cannot veto a Russian decision or vice versa. So, if the Russians occasionally offer short stays at ISS for private spaceflight participants, there is not much NASA can do about it but hope the PSP's stay at ISS is as short as possible.

Again as I said above this is a Russian decision that they are perfectly entitled to make so I am not sure why some feel the need to get bent out of shape about it.

I bet Space X & others will be glad when they can offer trips to a Bigelow station & don't have to be restricted by NASA's heavy hand.

[Prober]

Call it what you will, I think any "profit margin" will be better demonstrated by commercial flights to the Bigelow station. As Space Pete so accurately stated, ISS is a taxpayer funded laboratory.

Which obviously means the taxpayers have no right to use it?

taxpayers use it for "science" not entertainment.

[neilh]

Call it what you will, I think any "profit margin" will be better demonstrated by commercial flights to the Bigelow station. As Space Pete so accurately stated, ISS is a taxpayer funded laboratory.

Which obviously means the taxpayers have no right to use it?

taxpayers use it for "science" not entertainment.

While I'd argue that commercial visitors to the ISS do science, terrestrial taxpayer-funded laboratories are also used for entertainment purposes. Examples:

https://www.llnl.gov/news/newsreleases/2013/May/NR-13-05-05.html ("Star Trek: Into Darkness" scenes filmed at the National Ignition Facility)

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/technology/avengers.html (the opening scence of the Avengers filmed at NASA Glenn)

[neilh]

Alternatively, if NASA is firm about banning non-government employees from flying to the ISS on their watch, could a US company potentially purchase visitation privileges from the Russians?

(Also, I wonder if it might be worthwhile to split off this discussion about Non-Russian Commercial ISS Visits to another thread)

[QuantumG]

Maybe my taxpayers quip wasn't obvious: it's the US transport provider that pays the taxes.

[Star One]

This article talks about SA hoping to increase the number of customers visiting ISS in the future.

http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n1406/15lunarsoyuz/#.U57biIm9LCQ

[D_Dom]

My point is NASA will have a hard time establishing a legitimate cost of private astronaut "visits" to the space station. Where would you start?
Given an established price point NASA must defend decisions regarding "who" and "when" to the taxpaying public.

[D_Dom]

Maybe my taxpayers quip wasn't obvious: it's the US transport provider that pays the taxes.

Not sure what you mean by this...

[QuantumG]

Maybe my taxpayers quip wasn't obvious: it's the US transport provider that pays the taxes.

Not sure what you mean by this...

Boeing pays a lot of taxes.. they have a right to use their national laboratory.

Dunno how I can make that any more clear.