Space tourism by EADS

[hektor]

Hope Technik contract

http://me.nus.edu.sg/loadannouncement.php?id=189&title=NUS%20ME%20Alumni%20Clinches%20Major%20Aerospace%20Deal

[hektor]

Singapore to test 'space plane'

A made-in-Singapore prototype of a space plane, which can take travellers to the edge of space 100km above earth, will take off for its maiden test flights in May.

[hektor]

[TrevorMonty]

With Commercial Crew vehicles soon to be come a reality regular (LEO) Space Tourism flights should be far behind.

SpaceX are offering seats to Bigelow Spacestation at $26m each. This is based on F9E, with recoverable booster they should be able to drop seat price to $20m and still make similar profit. NB each flight will be for 6 passengers and 1 crew so $120m a flight. If they can do  6 of these a year that is $720m, on top of that you can add a few more cargo flights for servicing Bigelow spacestation, we are not looking at $1.2b a year revenue stream. Given booster and capsule a reuseable  each flights should be making $60m+ in profit.

Add a fully reusable 50t LV eg mini BFR and and 7metre capsule capable of take 25 paying passengers + crew and they should be drop seat prices to $10m that is $250m a flight. Markets tend to expand logarithmically as seat prices half so demand shouldn't be a problem.

With 25 guests at a time checking in Bigelow suddenly has a case for flying the monster BA2100 module.