We’ve all dreamed of going to space. Growing up, I personally wanted to become an astronaut. So imagine my surprise and sheer excitement when I found out that NASA was working on a space tourism program that would allow civilians to board the International Space Station (ISS).
The International Space Station | Image from NASA
If you follow NASA and the ISS on social media, you have probably seen astronauts posting photos of the earth from the Space Station. If you want to experience taking a selfie with the entire planet behind you, space tourism could happen as soon as 2020. That’s next year!
However, this new adventure comes at a pretty steep price and is sadly not open to people outside of the United States. Yahoo News reports that NASA’s Chief Financial Officer Jeff DeWit shared that one seat aboard the space flight operated by SpaceX and/or Boeing would cost a person around $58 million – and that doesn’t even cover the daily expenses of being able to stay at the ISS, which is somewhere upward of $35,000 per night. The trips to the ISS is limited to two per year, which is understandable.
NASA hopes that opening up space tourism will lessen the financial strain on the agency, which recently experienced some budget cuts. They are also hoping that it will be able to fund new ventures such as “landing the first woman on the moon by 2024”.
Hey, we can all dream of going to space eventually, and these developments are a step forward in that direction! In the meantime, you can totally send your name to Mars for free. That’s still pretty cool if you ask me.
