Seats aboard a Boeing rocket in space may go on sale soon

Minneapolis: Boeing and a space tourism company on Wednesday announced an agreement to sell tickets for rocket flights to the International Space Station.

Now Boeing just has to build a spaceship.

Space Adventures Ltd is already selling seats aboard the Russian-built Soyuz spacecraft. Its last passenger was the founder of Cirque du Soleil, Guy Laliberte, who paid 35 million dollars (128 million dirhams) for a 10-day trip.

Now, Boeing says Space Adventures will sell seats on its planned CST-100, which would carry seven people. NASA has encouraged aerospace companies like Boeing to develop spacecraft that can carry government-sponsored astronauts and pay tourists to the space station.

Funding

The idea is to spread the cost of NASA missions while stimulating space efforts financed by the private sector.

But the funding of Congress is not assured. And Boeing and Space Adventures will face competition from a California company called SpaceX, which is also looking for work from NASA for space station missions.

So far, seven customers have flown eight flights through Spacecraft Adventures.

Travel will be for millionaires, at least for now. Boeing and Space Adventures executives did not have pricing details, but said on a conference call that the prices would be “competitive” with the cost of a flight on the Soyuz spacecraft.

The more people fly in space, the sooner the cost will drop, said Eric Anderson, co-founder and president of Space Adventures.