SpaceX opens era of amateur astronauts, cosmic movie sets

SpaceX’s debut astronaut launch may be the biggest, most obvious opening shot yet in NASA’s grand arrange for commercializing Earth’s backyard.

Amateur astronauts, private space stations, flying factories, out-of-this-world movie sets - it is the future the area agency is striving to condition as it eases out of low-Earth orbit and aims for the moon and Mars.

It doesn’t quite reach the fantasized heights of George Jetson and Iron Man, but still promises a good amount of thrills.

“I’m still waiting for my personal jetpack. However the future is incredibly exciting,” NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren said your day before SpaceX’s historic liftoff.

NASA astronaut Nicole Mann, who'll try Boeing’s space capsule next year, envisions scientists, doctors, poets and reporters lining up for rocket rides.

“I see this as a real possibility,” she said. “You’re likely to see low-Earth orbit start.”

The road to make it happen hasn't been so crowded, with Elon Musk’s SpaceX company leading the pack.

A week ago, SpaceX became the first private company to send persons into orbit, something accomplished by only three countries in almost 60 years. The flight to the International Space Station returned astronaut launches to the U.S. after nine long years.

“This is hopefully the initial step on a journey toward a civilization on Mars,” an emotional Musk told journalists following liftoff.

Closer with time and space is SpaceX's involvement in an idea to launch Tom Cruise to the area station to shoot a movie in another 12 months. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine embraces the theory. He wants NASA to be one among many customers in this new space-traveling era, where private companies own and fly their own spaceships and sell empty seats.

“Sort of a changing of the guard in how we're going to do human spaceflight in the future,” said Mike Suffredini, a former NASA station program manager who now leads Houston's Axiom Space company.

Axiom has partnered with SpaceX to launch three customers to the area station in fall 2021. An experienced astronaut will accompany them, serving as the commander-slash-tour guide. Two private flights a year are planned, using completely automated capsules belonging to SpaceX or Boeing, NASA's two commercial crew providers.

The ticket price - which include 15 weeks of training and greater than a week at the space station - is about $55 million. Aside from the three registered, others have expressed serious interest, Suffredini said.

Since last weekend's successful launch, “everybody’s needs to wonder where their place in line is,” Suffredini told The Associated Press on Thursday. "That is clearly a really, awesome position to be in now.”

Space Adventures Inc. of Vienna, Virginia, also offers teamed up with SpaceX. Planned for late next year, this five-day-or-so mission would miss the space station and instead orbit two to three times higher for more sweeping views of Earth. The cost: around $35 million. It's also advertising rides to the area station via Boeing Starliner and Russian Soyuz capsules.

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic are taking it slower and lower with tourist flights. These space-skimming, up-and-down flights can last minutes, not days, and are expensive less. Hundreds already have reservations with Virgin Galactic.

Branson is the only 1 of the three billionaires planning to launch himself before putting customers aboard at $250,000 a pop. His winged rocketship is built to drop from a custom-made plane flying over New Mexico.

Blue Origin's customers will launch on rockets from West Texas; the capsules sport wall-to-ceiling windows, the major ever built for a spacecraft.

It's not merely rocket rides that have companies salivating.

From 2024, Axiom plans to build its addition to the 260-mile-high (420-kilometer-high) outpost to support its private astronauts. The segment would later be detached and turned into its free-flying abode.

Space Adventures is marketing flights to the moon - never to land, but buzz it in Russian spacecraft.

The moon - considered the proving ground for the best destination Mars - is where it's at these days. NASA is pushing to get astronauts back on the lunar surface by 2024 and set up a permanent base there.

Musk's company recently won contracts to haul cargo to the moon and create a lunar lander for astronauts.

However the bigger draw for Musk is Mars. It’s why he founded SpaceX 18 years ago - and just why he keeps pushing the area envelope.

“I cannot emphasize this enough. This can be a thing that we need to do. We should make life sustainably multi planetary. It’s not just one planet to the exclusion of another, but to extend life beyond Earth," Musk said after last weekend's launch.

“I call upon the general public to aid this goal,” he added, beckoning to the NASA TV cameras.

To satisfy that vision, SpaceX is which consists of own money to build up an enormous, bullet-shaped steel spacecraft called Starship in the bottom of Texas. Prototypes repeatedly have ruptured and exploded on the test pad, lately on the eve of the company’s astronaut flight from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center.

NASA's Bridenstine said space happens to be a $400 billion market, including satellites. Opening up spaceflight to paying customers, he said, could expand the marketplace to $1 trillion.

The target is to lower launch costs and crank up innovation, drawing in more people and more business. By NASA's count, 576 persons have flown in space, with only the wealthy few footing their own bill.

The world’s first space tourist, California businessman Dennis Tito, paid a reported $20 million to the Russians to fly to the area station in 2001 - against NASA’s wishes. The Canadian founder of Cirque du Soleil, Guy Laliberte, shelled out $35 million for a Russian ticket in 2009 2009. Space Adventures arranged both deals.

“It really is the billionaire boys’ club,” former space shuttle astronaut Leland Melvin said during last Saturday's launch broadcast. Once prices drop, he’d consider time for space, however, not without his dogs.

“They’re ready to go, need SpaceX suits for them,” he said.

Once lunar bases are established, the next phase will be Mars in the 2030s, according to Bridenstine.

“Those are the sorts of things that inspire another Elon Musk, another Jeff Bezos, another Sir Richard Branson. And that’s what we have to make contact with as an agency,” he said.

SpaceX still must get NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken safely back again to Earth come early july in its Dragon capsule. However the company already is looking ahead to the next astronaut crew. Crew mission director Benji Reed got a short taste of the future as he wrapped up a speak to the astronauts Monday.

“Many thanks for flying SpaceX,” he chimed.