Space Tourism’s Next Destination May Be the Moon
Frank Sinatra would have been happy to learn that a U.K. company called Excalibur Almaz wants to literally fly folks to the Moon and back again. The catch—it’ll cost a cool $150 million per ticket for a trip around Earth’s satellite and you’ll be flying in refurbished Soviet-era spacecraft built back in the 1970s. The Isle of Man-based company announced its intentions late last month, according to futurist site i09.
Exalibur Almaz is led by chief executive Art Dula, the executor of the late science fiction writer Robert Heinlein’s estate. The space start up has acquired two Salyut-class 63,800-pound space station cores and four three-person reusable reentry vehicles built in the 1970s for the Soviet Union’s public Salyut space station program and the secret Almaz military recon platforms the U.S.S.R also launched under the cover of the Salyut program.