“Russia’s Orbital Technologies Reveals Plans for Space Hotel.”
Looks like Bigelow might have some competition. Of course the Russians haven’t exactly dominated the Earth hotel industry. Maybe they’ll do better in space.
From that linked article:
And before you get too excited, it will cost $942,000 to visit the hotel. A five-day stay is expected to be about $157,000, plus the cost of the trip there: $785,000.
How can they launch someone to their hotel for $785K? Even a Soyuz costs quite a bit more than that per seat ($52 million to NASA but that’s because we have such a close working relationship with them /sarc).
In other news, they got the second warm body for the Lunar Soyuz excursion.
Larry, I wondered the same thing. Less than a million dollars a seat for hotel guests but $60 million for a NASA astronaut. Perhaps the real Soyuz launch costs are $1 million for the seat and $59 million for all the headaches and reams of paperwork required by NASA.
Frankly, I don’t believe the low cost in the article, as it impliies a Soyuz is less than $3 million a launch or they’ve figured out how to pack the capsule like a clown car.
Could it be “We lose money on every launch but we make it up in volume!” approach?
Nah, the Russians are pretty aggressive when it comes to making a profit. Unless they’ve been wildly inflating their prices for some time now. They good old Soyuz booster (and I sincerely mean that in a good way) has changed little over the past 20-40 years, so they recouped the R&D costs a long time ago. The Soyuz capsule has been updated several times but not radically. The Russians develop a system and then produce it without many changes for a long time. Our engineers tend to want to tinker with the designs all the time which really drives up the costs.
don’t you really drive over to mojave? godspeed in your travels.
High desert. It’s “up.”
It’s also north.
North isn’t up.
Up elevation is up. For example, you drive up to Beckley from Charleston even though you are going basically south because you are going up elevation essentially following the Kanawha/New River drainage up grade.
In regards to those numbers.. I expect someone doesn’t know how to use a currency converter.
North is up – just look on a map!
You’ll never make me change!
🙂
My daughter had someone in her class who refused to believe the Nile river flowed north, because rivers flow downhill.
I’m not quite that bad, but I have to think about it to realize that the Upper Cataracts were south of the Lower Cataracts.
North is up – just look on a map!
Denver is north of Colorado Springs but also about 800 feet lower in elevation (>1500 feet difference from my house). I drive down to Denver even if it is north of here.
People here in Alberta who drive between Calgary and Edmonton (the two major cities) drive UP to Edmonton and DOWN to Calgary. I’ve never heard it described otherwise. Edmonton is 200 miles north of Calgary and about 1500 feet lower in elevation.
I’m also somewhat comfortable with the North=Up map view on my GPS, versus the Forward=Up. Kind of funny the way the mind works.
Hrm… Light blogging.
Well, there’s this.
“Russia’s Orbital Technologies Reveals Plans for Space Hotel.”
Looks like Bigelow might have some competition. Of course the Russians haven’t exactly dominated the Earth hotel industry. Maybe they’ll do better in space.
From that linked article:
And before you get too excited, it will cost $942,000 to visit the hotel. A five-day stay is expected to be about $157,000, plus the cost of the trip there: $785,000.
How can they launch someone to their hotel for $785K? Even a Soyuz costs quite a bit more than that per seat ($52 million to NASA but that’s because we have such a close working relationship with them /sarc).
In other news, they got the second warm body for the Lunar Soyuz excursion.
Larry, I wondered the same thing. Less than a million dollars a seat for hotel guests but $60 million for a NASA astronaut. Perhaps the real Soyuz launch costs are $1 million for the seat and $59 million for all the headaches and reams of paperwork required by NASA.
Frankly, I don’t believe the low cost in the article, as it impliies a Soyuz is less than $3 million a launch or they’ve figured out how to pack the capsule like a clown car.
Could it be “We lose money on every launch but we make it up in volume!” approach?
Nah, the Russians are pretty aggressive when it comes to making a profit. Unless they’ve been wildly inflating their prices for some time now. They good old Soyuz booster (and I sincerely mean that in a good way) has changed little over the past 20-40 years, so they recouped the R&D costs a long time ago. The Soyuz capsule has been updated several times but not radically. The Russians develop a system and then produce it without many changes for a long time. Our engineers tend to want to tinker with the designs all the time which really drives up the costs.
don’t you really drive over to mojave? godspeed in your travels.
High desert. It’s “up.”
It’s also north.
North isn’t up.
Up elevation is up. For example, you drive up to Beckley from Charleston even though you are going basically south because you are going up elevation essentially following the Kanawha/New River drainage up grade.
In regards to those numbers.. I expect someone doesn’t know how to use a currency converter.
North is up – just look on a map!
You’ll never make me change!
🙂
My daughter had someone in her class who refused to believe the Nile river flowed north, because rivers flow downhill.
I’m not quite that bad, but I have to think about it to realize that the Upper Cataracts were south of the Lower Cataracts.
North is up – just look on a map!
Denver is north of Colorado Springs but also about 800 feet lower in elevation (>1500 feet difference from my house). I drive down to Denver even if it is north of here.
People here in Alberta who drive between Calgary and Edmonton (the two major cities) drive UP to Edmonton and DOWN to Calgary. I’ve never heard it described otherwise. Edmonton is 200 miles north of Calgary and about 1500 feet lower in elevation.
I’m also somewhat comfortable with the North=Up map view on my GPS, versus the Forward=Up. Kind of funny the way the mind works.