Trio paying $55M each to fly to space station next year
Two are grandfathers, the other has three young children. All three are extremely wealthy, with the means to pay the $55 million ticket price for an eight-day stay on the International Space Station. They are the first would-be spaceflight crew comprised entirely of private citizens in a mission to the station.
Sometime early next year, if all goes according to plan, the trio — Larry Connor, the managing partner of the Connor Group, a real estate investment firm based in Ohio; Mark Pathy, the chief executive of Mavrik Corp., a Canadian investment firm; and Eytan Stibbe, a businessman and former Israeli Air Force fighter pilot — will lift off from the Kennedy Space Center aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft for what is scheduled to be an eight-day stay on the International Space Station.
Accompanying them will be Michael López-Alegría, a former NASA astronaut who flew to space four times and is a vice president of Axiom Space, the Houston-based company that is coordinating their trip to space. López-Alegría is overseeing their training and will serve as the mission’s commander.
If it takes place as envisioned, the flight would mark a watershed moment in human spaceflight, one that according to Axiom, which announced the identities of the three paying passengers Tuesday, will eventually make space more accessible and further erode the monopoly that governments have long held on space travel. The company is planning two flights per year.
Over the years, several wealthy private citizens have flown to the space station — but on the Russian Soyuz craft because NASA forbade the practice on flights from U.S. soil. In 2019, NASA reversed its stance, saying the missions would help boost a growing commercial space industry as well as help NASA’s bottom line. The agency charges $35,000 a day per passenger for food, storage and communication during stays on board the orbiting laboratory — a total of $840,000 for three people for eight days.
“But it won’t come with any Hilton or Marriott points,” Jeff DeWit, NASA’s former chief financial officer, said at the 2019 announcement of the policy change.
Flying private citizens to space is a goal that NASA has had for years. At the beginning of the space shuttle program, it envisioned offering seats to private citizens and started a “Spaceflight Participant” program. A couple of members of Congress flew first, Sens. Jake Garn, R-Utah, and Bill Nelson, D-Fla., but then NASA selected a teacher — Christa McAuliffe, who taught history in Concord, N.H. Next, a journalist was to go, then perhaps an artist.
The program ended, however, after the space shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after takeoff, killing McAuliffe and the other astronauts on board. The agency decided spaceflight was too risky for ordinary citizens.