Only $55 million for a space odyssey?

This weekend, a mission, called Axiom-1, lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida towards the International Space Station (ISS). into clear blue skies following a smooth countdown. Leading the flight was Michael López-Alegría, a former NASA astronaut who is now a vice president at Axiom. 

The customers were Larry Connor, managing partner of the Connor Group, a Ohio real estate company, Mark Pathy, CEO of Mavrik Corporation, a Canadian investment company; and Eytan Stibbe, an investor and former Israeli Air Force pilot. All forked $55 million a piece to get up-there. 

We don’t know how much Axiom and the ISS get out of these $165 million, but the ISS was built at a cost of $150 billion. NASA's participation was $59 billion ($100 billion in today’s dollars), Russia's $12 billion, Europe's $5 billion, Japan's $5 billion and Canada's $2 billion and most of the cost of transporting the hardware was NASA’s with its space shuttles.

The cost of operating the facility costs NASA (excuse me, the American taxpayers) about $1.3 billion a year, so they can use a few extra dollars! This is only the United States’ share; the other partners like Russia, the European Space agency, Japan and Canada pitch in too to a much lesser degree. It’s also not the first time the ISS welcome space tourists. 

The Russian started the scheme and most recently Yusaku Maezwa, a wealthy Japanese traveled on the Russian Soyuz rocket to get there. While a war is raging in Ukraine, all that “space tourism” idea and the million dollars thrown into that flight of fancy makes me cringe. Well, I might just be a tad jealous...