Sergey Brin books joyride on Russian rocket Google kingpin Sergey Brin has put down $5m to book a ride into space aboard a Russian rocket, according to reports. American orbital-joyride travel agency Space Adventures revealed the move yesterday. "I am a big believer in the exploration and commercial development of the space frontier and am looking forward to the …
Someone please correct me if I am wrong here, but didn't these trips up to the ISS used to cost 20 mil+? Since when does it cost only 5 mil to vacation on the ISS? Given the low US dollar, that seems really rather...low.
Does that honestly cover all the training, fuel expended, supplies, and the time of all the various people required to keep track of you while you are up there?
On a completely unrelated note...anyone have 5 mil I can borrow?
No questions asked. Just change your mind. If it costs twenty+ maybe that was causing people to come back to their senses about just what they are doing with that money, when it might be put to better use in philanthropy. I know one person that did this mainly because the trip in question was not into true outer space in that it was still inside our atmosphere, and the 0-g was simply from the parabolic curve dipping back toward Earth...something that could be obtained far cheaper in specially equipped comercial airliners.
I would love to go, and always wanted to go to the moon and look back at the Earth. Probably not in my lifetime. As far as the ISS, I hear the rooms come with a hall bathroom. :)
And frisk him as he gets on board, to make sure he's not concealing any discs containing a Google Desktop installer. I bet he tries to change the default search provider options up there too[1].
[1] Not that that is a bad thing, I wouldn't want to use Live search to find Russian toilet spares either.
By the time I read the article/posted that it was something like 3:30 in the morning.
Also: 5 mil doesn't seem like a lot to me, not for a ride on a soyuz to the ISS. I believe shipping regular cargo to LEO is someting like $20,000 a pound on the cheap, might-just-explode rockets, let alone man-rated ones. 5 mil being the deposit makes a lot more sense.
Sergey perhaps does not know of the recent Russian reentry vehicle which went off course by quite a long way. Having demonstrated their ability to determine US astronauts' requirements for diapers (negative apparently), the Russians may consider it a splendid occasion to show Sergey what search really means. As soon as they put wheels, steering, and an engine on the guidance computers...
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