Space X to Send Tourists to International Space Station by 2021

SpaceX has recently announced a partnership to send three tourists to the International Space Station (ISS), which is going to be the first private trip to space in more than a decade.

The Elon Musk’s company has signed an agreement with Axiom Space to transport the three tourists along with a commander in one of its Crew Dragon capsules in the second half of 2021.

Michael Suffredini CEO of Axiom said the flight “will represent a watershed moment in the march toward universal and routine access to space.” Suffredini has not revealed the price of the ticket.

According to an estimate, the cost of launching a Falcon 9 rocket of Space X is around $60 million, besides this, there is a cost attached to building a new capsule and therefore it can be said that the project price tag could easily exceed $100 million. Therefore a single ticket is likely to cost ten million dollars.

So far 8 space tourists have gone to the ISS on Russian Soyuz rockets with the company Space Adventures. The first space tourist was Dennis Tito, who in the year 2001 paid $20 million for an eight-hour stay on the ISS. The last tourist to go to space was Cirque du Soleil, founder of Guy Laliberte, in the year 2009.

Last month, SpaceX has announced its partnership with Space Adventures to send 4 tourists deep into the orbit, which was not tried by any other private tour so far. At the earliest this mission is also projected for late 2021, it may touch-first half of 2022 too.

Apart from Space X, other companies who are involved in space tourism are Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin.

Both, Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin are developing vessels to send its tourists beyond the border of space, which may be 80 kilometers or 100 kilometers, or up to 62 miles depending on the capabilities of the vessel. In the mid-2000s, Virgin first sold its tickets that started at $250,000.

SpaceX is also offering trips for tourists in one of its most talked projects which is powered by the same reusable Falcon 9 rocket that puts satellites into space and sends astronauts to the ISS. Meanwhile, Boeing is also developing a crew capsule named Starliner, with the aim to transport US astronauts to the ISS.

Like SpaceX, Boeing was also in the race to send tourists into space, but the development of the program was disturbed by some major glitches that resulted in the early termination of an uncrewed test flight in December last year.