Musk as a regular on the hot search list, several hot searches in a week is not strange, not long ago in the 2022 global billionaire list on the top of the hot search, published that some people do not have to live so long on the hot search, and then become the largest shareholder of Twitter and then want a Twitter plus an edit button, and then to yesterday's news - the 3 super rich (with a former astronaut "play") with a rocket to send to space: to the space station for an 8-day tour, this is the first privately customized "extraterrestrial" trip of mankind, the ticket price is 350 million yuan.
It should be noted that this is not the first purely commercial manned space mission, the first commercial manned mission was on September 16, 2021, four ordinary people (non-astronauts) were also sent into space by SpaceX's manned "Dragon spacecraft" and Falcon 9 rockets for a period of three days, as for the cost, it is said that these seats cost a total of 200 million US dollars, an average of 50 million US dollars, and the price of this customized "Heaven" service is close.
When you see an astronaut or a sci-fi movie, someone must have thought about it: How much would it cost to go to a space station to experience the feeling of a rocket? Now there is a clear answer to this in reality, the price is 50 million -55 million US dollars. On the night of April 8, 2022, three more local tycoons each spent $55 million (about 350 million yuan) to start a trip to the space station with a former NASA astronaut.
There are also some details online:
These costs include: SpaceX launch shipping fees, space mission training fees, insurance fees, NASA fees related to visits to the International Space Station, such as mission management fees of $4.8 million per time, for mission planning and execution, space-to-earth communication costs, etc.; official astronaut time occupation fees of $5.2 million / person, for the cost of time required by official astronauts to accompany space tourists; and international space station living expenses, 88,000 to 164,000 US dollars per person per day.
At 11:17 p.m. Beijing time on Friday, April 8, the Falcon 9 launcher was launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida to begin a 10-day mission in which astronauts will spend eight days on the International Space Station conducting scientific research and conducting more than 25 different experiments, the mission code of this flight is called AX-1.
There was no problem with the ignition, and the Falcon 9's first-stage thrusters were successfully recovered at sea after completing their mission.
Behind the success of recycling, which seems to be understated here, in fact, it is exchanged for many failures, in the past few years, watching Musk put falcon "big fireworks" is still a big pleasure for foreign netizens, and the following is the scene of the previous falcon one launch failure.
After all kinds of failures, at the time of reading this article, the Dragon spacecraft had already completed docking with the International Space Station.
The coordinator of the trip was an organization called Axiom Space, which organized the trip and paid Space Exploration Technologies and NASA separately for the transportation and use of the space station. Axiom Space is ostensibly committed to building the world's first commercial space station, but in fact, their greater goal and ambition is not just a commercial space station, but really wants to become the starting point for future humans to leave the earth!
Doesn't that sound like science fiction? That's what they say on their official website, and they've set themselves "small goals" to start a private mission on the International Space Station in 2021 and build the solar system's first commercial space station in 2024.
The AX-1 manned mission is the plan for the end of 2021 as stated on the official website, but it has been postponed for various reasons, and the official has only revealed that the team is continuing the pre-launch processing work, without other detailed information, postponed from the end of 2021 to February 21, 2022, and then postponed to March 30, April 1, April 3, April 6, and finally officially started on the 8th.
As for the grand plan on the official website that is always human considerations, from the experience of the founders of Axiom Space, they do dare to say that founder and CEO Michael Suffredini, who served as NASA's international space station project manager from 2005 to 2015, was responsible for overseeing the transition from assembly to operation and commercial utilization of the space station.
Stinger Ghaffarian Technologies, a company co-founder and executive chairman Kam Ghaffarian once founded, is NASA's second-largest engineering services contractor, and is also used to train NASA astronauts and operate the International Space Station. Axiom Space hopes to eventually replace the International Space Station.
This time to go up the "space tourists" can also find an introduction on the official website of Axiom Space, everyone has prepared a clear avatar and a special introduction document for netizens to read, the above has its own experience and achievements, let's see what kind of people can "go to heaven". There is also a digression here, when interviewed, they did not like to be called "space tourists" (originally meaning Space Flight Participants), should be called "private astronauts". The following are officially available sources.
Michael López-Alegría, the commander of the mission, was born in Madrid, Spain, immigrated to the United States with his family, and is the chief astronaut of Axiom Space and the commander of the Ax-1 mission. López-Alegría has served as an astronaut four times, participating in space shuttle missions such as STS-73, STS-92 and STS-113, and as commander of the 14th expedition to the International Space Station, flying to and from the International Space Station on the Soyuz TMA-9 spacecraft. Holds the record for NASA's highest number of extravehicular activities, the number of spacewalks (the second in the world, 10 in total) and the cumulative time (67 hours and 40 minutes).
Larry Connor Via the Ax-1 mission, Connor will be the first private pilot to reach the International Space Station and the first human to reach the deepest ocean depths and outer space in a year. He is the founder and managing partner of the Connor Group, whose real estate investment firm grew from $0 to $3.5 billion in assets, and has also founded two technology companies.
The real estate tycoon, who is over 70 years old this year, has never lacked a sense of adventure, not only to the sky, but also to the sea. A year before joining the space trip, he served as co-pilot of an expedition to explore the deepest parts of the ocean. Last April, Connor partnered with EYOS Expeditions and Karadan Marine to travel to the mariana trench, the deepest abyss in the world, the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific Ocean, about 200 miles from Guam, and 10,929 meters below sea level. Upon successful completion of this space station tour, Connor will be the third person in history to travel to space and the ocean floor at the same time.
In addition, Connor himself is a good boss who is sympathetic to employees. He entered the stock market and made a profit of $1.6 million in just eight days, equivalent to 20 years of income for an average wage earner. However, Connor did not take the huge profits for himself, but instead shared a huge amount of money with all non-high-paid employees, from maintenance workers to property managers, etc., in order to express his gratitude to his subordinates and hope to help employees survive the difficulties.
Eytan Stibbe is a former Israeli fighter pilot, businessman, and private astronaut. From 2013 to 2019, he worked as an instructor at the Israel Air Force Flight Academy, teaching the initial stages of the Combat Pilots course. During his 43 years in the Israeli Air Force, Stibbe has a recorded flight time of thousands of hours, and after participating in this mission, he will become the second Israeli to go into space after Ilan Ramon, who died in the Columbia space shuttle disaster.
Mark Pathy is a Canadian businessman, philanthropist and private astronaut. He is the CEO of Mavrik, a Canadian private investment firm, chairman of stingray Group and former co-CEO of Fednav. For this space trip, Pathy seems to be looking forward to it. "I've had this fantasy since I was a kid, watching Star Trek, I fantasized about traveling through space, bouncing around the universe, meeting new species, discovering new worlds."
Their mission includes about 25 experiments on aging, heart health and stem cells, and in addition to these experiments, there is also a module dedicated to sightseeing the Earth in Axiom Space's plan, Axiom Space plans to launch a research and manufacturing facility, astronaut living module and Earth observatory with huge "floor-to-ceiling windows" to form the "Axiom segment" of the International Space Station, the first module is expected to be launched in the second half of 2024.
It seems that rich people are not popular to look up at the stars and have become popular to watch the earth. In this way, Musk's rocket seems to be not only a spacecraft, but also quietly advancing the progress of the aerospace industry in other countries, which may be the daily life of the world's richest man.
As a hit worker, I feel a little dreamy...