Russia Announces End to Space Tourism in 2010

epsas writes "On Cosmonaut's Day (April 12th 2008) the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roskosmos) announced that they will cease it's $40,000,000-a-flight space tourism enterprise. Vitaly Perminov, the head of Roskosmos, elaborated on this statement by citing national criticism of the space tourism project; all the while reiterating Roskosmos's focus on the International Space Station and the new launch site at Vostochny Cosmodrome: 'Vitaly Lopota, the president of the Energia space rocket corporation, said he believes space tourism is a forced measure compensating for insufficient financing of the Russian space program.' This statement (made the day before) by Vitaly Lopota follows another announcement that 'Energia is ready to send missions to the Moon and Mars if told to do so by the government.'"

so??

italy Lopota, the president of the Energia space rocket corporation, said he believes space tourism is a forced measure compensating for insufficient financing of the Russian space program

And this is bad...why?? If space programs are languishing in funding for either development or research, why not charge rich suckers (with dreams just like us) huge amounts of money to fund it? If you have the infrastructure, it sounds lucrative. And I'd be willing to bet that the market would support even more ridiculous prices than $40 mil.

Public private partnership that works

I don't care if they call it the Pepsi Cosmodrome and sell seats that defray the costs. I actually hope they get YouTube to sponsor streaming video of the entire operation, with product placement, endorsements, memorabilia, space scouts and the rest of "The Man Who Sold The Moon [wikipedia.org]" experience. What I care about is that they go, and keep going.

The Russians pioneered manned spaceflight [bayqongyr.com] and it's not for us to tell them how to do it. If they like capitalism, so much the better.

Re:Public private partnership that works

I suspect its a pride issue rather than anything else. To them having paid seats looks like they have to go around begging to get enough money to take off.

Re:Public private partnership that works

Beggers can't be chosers.

Re:Public private partnership that works

Pride? Begging?

"space tourism" was the most important experiment the ISS was ever involved in.

To have your space program sustainable due to willing customers rather than solely dependent on government enforced taxes is what I call making progress[1]. One of the milestones in aerospace and the Russians were pioneers.

It is a step backwards if they discontinue space tourism (and do not move it to some other agency/organization).

[1] When people stop clapping hands and cheering every time after space vehicles somehow manage to lift off without blowing up, that's even more progress ;).

Re:so??

This is more about Russian national pride. They felt humiliated at the state of desperation they had sunk to, so now that their economy is doing better, they're looking to restore some of the prestige and remove the "Filene's Basement" aura now attached to their space program.

Russians are very proud, and theres a huge resurgence of nationalism currently. That's whats behind this.

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Instead of canceling it, they could create a huge media event around it. They are after all the ones to even offer comercialized space tourism, if that is not something to be proud of. In the beginning they might have done it out of desperation, but if the

Re:

Interesting theory, but if you read the article it tells you the actual reason! ;-)

Re:so??

This is more about Russian national pride. They felt humiliated at the state of desperation they had sunk to, so now that their economy is doing better, they're looking to restore some of the prestige and remove the "Filene's Basement" aura now attached to their space program.

If you were to replace all the "they/their" with "Putin/Putin's," you'd be spot-on correct.

Anthropomorphizing nations and their macroscopic behavior as if "all citizens" were behind it, and that a given nation "feels/thinks/believes" one particular thing in unanimity (or even on the balance) is a common basis of flawed statements and arguments about "national policy."

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Like you have pointed out - these commercial space tourism joints only get a small taste of space. If you tag along with the Russians you get to experience a complete resupply mission. In my opinion you cannot compare the two.

Tourists

From TFA:
"Tourism is a forced activity. I am sorry, but we have built the
ISS [the International Space Station] not for space tourists but for
serving the needs of the people of Earth," Lopota said.

Ah finally! It's nice to have confirmation from officials that tourists are, in fact, not people. Now if only i could get that hunting permit ...

Re:Tourists

It's Tourist Season already? I thought I had a couple more weekends to get in practice at the range...

Unfortunate

The space tourist was paying most of the cost of the Soyuz booster/capsule while allowing the RSA to continue meeting its commitments to the project. This is a step backwards for space, government funding doesn't have the same potential for long term growth that commercial money does. Look at the airplane, for instance. Government funding did big things, but the real growth and expansion came with private funds.

Re:Unfortunate

Continued tourist flights to the ISS were untenable. By 2010, the station is fully operational (heh). There'd be a lot more resistance from the other ISS partners to continuing this. There's also the possibility that the launch schedule after 2010 can't fit in a space tourist. The station has to maintain a microgravity environment which means eliminating vibration. Dockings are a source of vibration wo even now the number of dockings to the station is very restricted.

Re:

Even that growth is limited. The power of commercial endeavors in space is that they pay for themselves. So that means there's feedback in the system encourage further investment in space.

Drat! saving the money in my penny jar for this!

Is this good or bad? The media show of the few immeasurably rich going into space has brought good attention to the space programs, but at times, it has been humorous in a sad sort of way.

More money on robotic research, best bang for the buck in outer spac

Re:Drat! saving the money in my penny jar for this

The moon is quite important to a mars trip. Getting from earth to the moon uses a lot of fuel. Going to mars from the moon is easier, especially if you send some extra fuel and supplies to the moon before you get there. Going to the moon also gives you a c

Reprioritization?

I'm not really seeing the problem with that. Personally, I think that if politicians and world leaders (I'm looking at you over there in the Whitehouse) could stop their idiocy and work together on a few things, we might find resources (not jut money) to do things like exploit^H^H^H^Hore the solar system a bit, perhaps go finding things like more room to live, more minerals, and perhaps some mysterious substance that helps us to manage global climate change.

The more that we all sit here on this rock arguing about stupid stuff, the longer the Borg has to get here before we are ready, god damnit!

Seriously, the more we learn about space, the solar system, universe etc. the more prepared we will be to better care for this little rock we call home. I do not believe that there is any one country that has the resources to do this alone. I believe it will take huge cooperative efforts to find the answers that humankind actually needs.

Right now we are starving people for the chance to make weak fuel out of corn. When you look at the facts of biofuel, it seems astoundingly stupid to do what we are doing as a group. I think that if we are going to find something that will help serve our energy needs we will have to keep exploring. Only through exploration do we find things that change life as we know it.

Sadly, if Vladimir Smith found out how to create a zero point module (go Stargate) next week, it would be kept a secret and not released to the public until some whistle-blower feels guilty on their deathbed. ZPMs and other such 'free energy' systems/devices and those that do not make anyone any money will be hidden from sight. A sad fact, and not to seem socialist but if we don't all try cooperation to solve some of the very urgent problems, Armageddon sans god is all that is left us. Nuclear energy might become safer with new discoveries lately, and I'm all for it. If you are not using it, safety and discoveries to make it safer are hardly on the radar of those who need to be inventing stuff like that. With nearly free electricity we can carry on with electric vehicles.

The space agencies around the globe really need to work together as has been shown, space tourism really isn't going to foot the bill for the kind of exploration that we need to be doing.

Solar and wind power are not THE answer to the energy needs of the human race and the planet Earth. We need to expand technologically beyond what we have so far. Look at Monsanto? GM foods and people are still starving around the globe. If we don't get some socialist ideas in action soon, we're headed for a scifi nightmare ending. Space exploration thus far has embodied all that is generally good in humankind: Exploration, advancement, betterment, working for the common good. Even if it was a space race for bragging rights or dominance of the domain, it was done in a way that has helped us all in one way or another. We need much more of it.

Yes, you can believe the book "The day after Roswell" http://www.amazon.com/Day-After-Roswell-Philip-Corso/dp/067101756X [amazon.com]if you like, but the way that space exploration has changed our lives is without comparison. I hope that this is one thing that we, as the human race, end up getting right.

haha

I bet this is just marketing.
sort of like how disney keeps saying that they are going to lock such and such title up in their vault for 50 years and not ever let it see the light of day.

That would make "that bloke" Branson happy

End of Russian space tourism - more bucks to private space programs.

Re:

Except that the Virgin/Scaled Composites thing is just a Mach 2 rollercoaster straight up to 100km, then plummet back to earth; whereas the Russian have a real space program, you know, that actually puts things in orbit. That's much, much harder to do.

Simple reason: Oil Money

Now that Russia has oil money due to high oil prices, they can afford to fund their space program without the need for tourism. I doubt tourism was profitable. They probably did it keep the space program alive and space workers employed during hard times. But with the oil money, they can end that practice.

It's basic business sense.

By 2010 virgin galactic will have several flights, and a decent track record offering flights at a much cheaper rate(Virgin flights are only $200,000), and better suited for civilians (3 days training). It wouldn't make much sense to try to compete against them, and we all know how the Russians love business competition. Personally I'm not going to be too excited until we start getting flights to the moon, and really there's a ton of way cooler places on Earth you can go for a lot cheaper.

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Not a cat in hell's chance; an attempt at a manned Mars mission won't happen this side of 2050. And I still haven't had any takers on that bet. *shrug*

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Doubling the price through inflation isn't a problem as long as they outsource to America for half the price. Wonders of the weak dollar.