In the next 15-20 years, orbital flights of tourists are unlikely to become mass due to the high cost. This was announced on September 16 by the general director of Glavkosmos, Dmitry Loskutov.
"Cosmonautics is still a costly matter, and it is hardly possible to talk about mass orbital flights in the next 15-20 years. Flights to orbit will remain the privilege of states and those private space lovers who will be able to pay for such a trip, " Loskutov told TASS.
Loskutov noted that so far no private company can do without financial support from the state. For example, the company Space X has earned S28 billion to date, of which 56% is accounted for by state financing, another 24% of the profit is private investment, Loskutov noted.
At the same time, Russia devotes more time to orbital flights.
"We have serious developments in the field of manned cosmonautics, so the direction of suborbital flights, intended more for entertainment, has not received such development as in the United States," Loskutov added.
Earlier on Thursday, the Crew Dragon spacecraft with the first civilian space mission Inspiration4 was launched into an orbit with a height of 585 km. The crew will have a three-day mission, after which Crew Dragon will land on water in the Atlantic Ocean.
The head of the crew was 38-year-old American billionaire Jared Isaakman. Another participant in the flight is former US Air Force veteran Chris Sembrosky. Hayley Arsenault, who suffered from bone cancer as a child, also became a space tourist. Due to the disease, one of her legs was amputated, now the girl moves with the help of a prosthesis.
As explained in SpaceX, the team sent to space will conduct scientific research "aimed at improving the health of people on Earth and during future long-term space flights."
On June 25, the company of British entrepreneur Richard Branson, Virgin Galactic, received approval from the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to launch customers on suborbital flights from New Mexico. The company has already started selling tickets for its SpaceShipTwo spaceplane. The price of one seat starts from $450 thousand.
On July 20, Amazon creator Jeff Bezos went on a suborbital space flight on the New Shepard spacecraft, manufactured by his aerospace company Blue Origin. It lasted about 11 minutes, the ship was controlled automatically. The passengers of the ship in addition to Bezos were his younger brother Mark, 82-year-old professional pilot Wally Funk and 18-year-old Oliver Damen from the Netherlands.
