The trip was written by Axiom Space, a private startup that takes rides with SpaceX and coordinates flights to the ISS for anyone who can afford it.
Passengers on this voyage – which includes former NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegría, who will lead the mission as Axiom staff, and three paying customers – will take off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday at 12 p.m. : 05 p.m. ET. They will lead into a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, the same capsule that SpaceX has already used to transport NASA astronauts to the ISS. The capsule orbits one of SpaceX’s 230-foot-high Falcon 9 rockets.
The capsule will then be detached from the rocket and fly freely into space all day Thursday as the spacecraft slowly maneuvers near the ISS. It is scheduled to moor at the space station around 3 p.m. ET Friday.
This mission, called the AX-1, will mark the first time in history that private, or otherwise non-professional astronauts, will be launched to the ISS from US soil. And it’s the first thing that Axiom, the company that organized and mediated this mission with SpaceX, hopes will be many similar flights for anyone who can afford it.
The AX-1 is also just the second space tourism flight for SpaceX, following the launch of four civilians in September 2021 on a three-day orbital journey that traveled even higher than the ISS.
During their eight-day stay on the space station, the AX-1 crew will conduct some scientific experiments, break bread with the professional astronauts already on the football field-sized space station, and enjoy the magnificent view of our planet. downwards. below.
WHO IS IN THIS MISSION?
Lopez-Alegría, 63, made four trips between 1995 and 2007 during his tenure at NASA. He left space service in 2012 and joined Axiom a few years later with the goal of returning to space – but as a private astronaut and not as an official member of the corps.
Axiom acts as an intermediary between paying paying customers who want to take an exciting multimillion-dollar spacewalk, booking flights with SpaceX, handling negotiations with NASA, and training aspiring space travelers. Axiom hopes to make these flights regular, as NASA agreed a few years ago to open the ISS to space tourism and other commercial enterprises.
It is not clear how much these trips cost the customer. Although previous prices indicated that a trip to the ISS was $ 55 million per seat, Axiom declined to confirm that amount this week. (“Axiom Space does not disclose financial terms,” Axiom spokeswoman Bettina Inclan told CNN Buisness via email.)
There are three customers paying on this flight. They are all rich white men, continuing a trend that plagues the commercial spaceflight sector and its inaccessibility to more diverse sections of the population. The vast majority of people who have so far been able to afford to pay for space – either on SpaceX flights or on submarine missions such as those offered by Blue Origin – were white businessmen. It is indicative of how far reality is from the promising distant space dream coming from entrepreneurs who claim that space is “for everyone” and the commercialization of space will “democratize” it amid growing income inequality. With such exuberant prices, the space will remain commercially accessible only to the elite for the immediate future. Although the goal is to drastically reduce the cost of space travel, we hope that ticket prices will be affordable for more people, it is not clear how and when this will happen.
The real estate mogul LARY CONOR
Larry Connor, 72, is a real estate mogul from Dayton, Ohio. He founded The Connor Group, which has developments in 16 markets across the country and has more than $ 3.5 billion in assets, according to the company’s website. He is an avid adventurer, has car races and climbs mountains.
He also has experience as a private pilot and has participated in acrobatic races and will be the designated pilot for this mission. (It should be noted that SpaceX Crew Dragon is fully autonomous, although space flight pilots are trained to be ready to take on something that goes wrong.)
“My journey really started seven or eight years ago. I was always interested in space and I started thinking about it after reading about an American who went to Russia and went to Soyuz [spacecraft]”, He said in an interview with the Dayton Natural History Society last year, after his plans to fly an AX-1 were revealed.
Conor was probably referring to a U.S. citizen who booked a flight to the ISS via Space Adventures, a company that has booked Russian Soyuz spacecraft for tourists since the early 2000s. Russian space agency and included official Russian astronauts. The AX-1 mission will be the first to include a crew of exclusively private astronauts.
Conor said he had decided to close the mission for “the challenge”.
“We will really be trained to the standards of professional astronauts,” he said.
FORMER SHIPPING CEO MARK PATHY
Mark Pathy, 52, is the founder and CEO of Mavrik Corp., a Canadian investment firm and family firm. The website states that Mavrik has a “particular focus on innovation, entrepreneurship and responsible investment”, although many of its investment decisions are not public.
CB Insights, which monitors private equity, lists only one known investment. He backed a Canadian startup called Ferme d’hiver, which says it “offers farming tools with artificial intelligence.”
Pathy is also the former CEO of a shipping company, Fednav, which is a Pathy family business.
Regarding the AX-1 mission, Pathy told CTV News: “It’s a lot of money. I feel very lucky to be able to afford this kind of trip. Obviously not many people can. But at the same time I do not have to choose, fortunately, between doing something like that or being charitable. “
He added that “it has been a dream since I was little and I saw Captain Kirk bouncing around the universe in Enterprise” to go into space.
ΕΥΤΑΝ ΣΤΙΜΠΕ
Eytan Stibbe, 64, is an Israeli businessman.
According to Axiom’s biography, Stibbe, a former fighter pilot in the Israeli Air Force, founded Vital Capital a decade ago. Its website says the company is investing in companies involved in areas such as food and healthcare in developing areas, especially across Africa, for “high-performance opportunities”.
Axiom says Stibbe’s trip is in “collaboration” with the Ramon Foundation, a non-profit space education organization named after Israel’s first astronaut, Ilan Ramon, who died in the 2003 Columbia space shuttle crash. Stibbe Axiom’s biography also says that Ramon shared a “close” friendship. Stibbe will be only the second Israeli to go into space.
He announced his decision to join the AX-1 crew at a ceremony at the Israeli president’s residence in 2020 and was criticized by the Israeli press for highlighting Stibbe’s alleged transactions in the past, particularly in connection with allegations of military equipment trafficking. During his time with LR Group, an investment and development group, which he left in 2011, according to a Stibbe spokesman.
In particular, reports claim that Stibbe was involved in the sale of military aircraft to Angola, which was involved in a violent civil war from the 1970s to 2002.
The allegations come from reports from the Israeli news site Haaretz.
In a television interview from 2012, which was conducted in Hebrew and translated by Israeli news agencies and CNN Business, Stibbe also appeared to confirm his involvement.
“We helped Angola end the war by bringing in interceptor aircraft, two Su-27 fighter jets, from Uzbekistan,” he said. “Their presence in the country stopped the flights supplying weapons, food and ammunition and the export of illegal diamonds from Angola. After a year and a half, the war is over.”
A statement from Stibbe told CNN Business that “the LR Group’s activities in Angola focused almost exclusively on agricultural infrastructure, vocational training, water, airports and telecommunications.”
He adds that LR Group “received a request from [US-backed Angolan] government to help upgrade its airspace infrastructure to ICAO international standards “and that aircraft sales were” licensed for export and were perfectly legal “.
“In addition, the aircraft and air control radars were used only for deterrent purposes,” the statement said.
The LR Group responded to a statement to CNN Business, saying: “The LR Group is involved in the areas of health, telecommunications, food, agriculture, renewable energy and water, with the aim of developing social welfare of local populations around the world “.
“At the time Stibbe was a partner in the company, he was serving as an associate in charge of operating and financing the company’s Angolan business,” the statement said. “After leaving the company, he bought the business in Angola in 2012, and continued to operate there.”
LR Group is currently involved in a legal dispute over complaints against Stibbe dating back to the time he was a partner in the company.
Stibbe’s representatives declined to comment on the court battle.
As for his decision to go into space, Stibbe said “as a child in the dark nights I looked at the stars and waited patiently to see a falling star and I asked myself, what is there beyond what the eyes see?” said in comments translated by i24NEWS.
With his own …
