Meghana KandraSpaceX launched its first civilian crew spaceflight last week. As the crew Inspiration4 kept getting attention for the whole week, more civilians are curious to know about the upcoming civilian flights of SpaceX. As the space company is known to have reduced the spaceflight costs, though the cost for civilians to travel is not announced, many people are enquiring about the company.
Image credits- Teslarati
SpaceX as a conference with reported to discuss the all-civilian mission. SpaceX senior director of human spaceflight Benji Reed talking about the increasing interest among civilians. Stated that Inspiration4 million attracted “tons of interest” from citizens to know the space tour cost and how much a ticket would cost from Crew dragon and Starship. The company hasn’t announced any ticket price or the Inspiration4 spaceflight cost. However, it is known that it cost the company $55 million per seat to send 7 people to the ISS (referring to the crew dragon astronauts sent to ISS).
As the Starship can carry many people (around 100) the spaceflight cost could possibly decrease even more. The potential for regular citizens to be able to afford the ticket is higher for SpaceX than the other companies that sent the first civilian people to space. Reed stated, “The amount of people who are approaching us through our sales and marketing portals has actually increased significantly. There’s tons of interest rolling in now,”
Plans for civilian crew
Furthermore Reed announced that SpaceX is considering making Crew Dragon specially for civilian crew flights. Stating, “If the demand is there, then we’ll want to look at what we can do to continue to grow that,” Further added, “And then, on the horizon, of course, is Starship. Starship will be able to carry a lot more people at once. So, you know, there’s really both options, and we have interest for both Dragons and Starships, which is pretty exciting.”
Without revealing the cost per person, Reed said, “If you look at the track record of SpaceX, we’ve driven down launch costs overall. When you look at what it really costs for us to be servicing the NASA [missions] or other things that we’re doing, we’re trying very hard to drive that down. And in opening up the market to these kinds of visions, we’re doing something nobody’s ever been able to do before. But you’ve got to keep driving that cost down.”
Additionally, the company also hasn’t announced which organizations or people are looking for more details.