What will tourists do in outer space
(ORDO NEWS) — The spacewalk procedure does not require special preparation, in contrast to the work there, so tourists will simply be let out and let them hang out, NASA astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman said.
Earlier this week, RSC Energia announced the signing of a contract with Space Adventures for the flight of two tourists on Soyuz to the ISS in 2023. It was reported that one of the tourists could make the first ever spacewalk from the station along with the Russian astronaut. According to Eric Anderson, president of Space Adventures, several tourists have expressed a desire to make spacewalks, but no contract has been signed with them yet.
“I can’t imagine that they were going to put a tourist in a spacesuit and set some important task for him. They will just let them out, give them the opportunity to hang out there for a while, and then return them to the station,” said Hoffman, former astronaut, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
He made five space flights, having spent a total of more than 1.2 thousand hours in space, 25 of them in open space. During his career, Hoffman made four spacewalks, dreamed and prepared to fly to the Russian Mir station, but due to his high growth he was not allowed to fly on the Soyuz spacecraft.
According to the astronaut, simply going out into outer space does not require the amount of training that astronauts are preparing to work on the outer surface of the station.
“Most of the time in training astronauts is required in order to learn how to do useful work. In the case of tourists, I assume that they will not ask them to go outside and engage in replacing the ISS batteries, so it will not take as much time as real astronauts,” considers the interlocutor of the agency.
He emphasized that the amount of training depends on the tasks set.
“Of course, you should know how the spacesuit works, what to do if something goes wrong with the oxygen supply. But tourists, if something goes wrong with the suit, can return very quickly,” Hoffman emphasized.
The astronaut, whose last space flight took place in 1996, wondered about the cost of going out into outer space for tourists.
“It’s interesting to know how much they (companies) charge for this, since the spacesuit is very expensive equipment,” Hoffman said.
The head of the Space Policy Institute, Ivan Moiseev, previously suggested that a weekly flight into space could cost a tourist $ 50 million, and going out into outer space would increase the cost of the “tour” four times.
—
Online:
Contact us: [email protected]
Our Standards, Terms of Use: Standard Terms And Conditions.
