Space tourism flights attract scientists

New York Times : Science researchers may make more use of so-called space tourism flights than tourists, writes Kenneth Chang for the New York Times. Within a few years, Virgin Galactic plans to fly its SpaceShipTwo once or twice a dayachieving about four minutes of weightlessness per flightwhile XCOR Aerospace’s Lynx could make up to four flights per day. At $100 000 to $200 000 per ticket, the suborbital flights will seem expensive to individuals—but not as expensive to scientists who are used to the millions of dollars that NASA, for example, typically spends to gain access to space. The Southwest Research Institute’s space sciences and engineering division in Boulder, Colorado, has already signed a contract and paid the deposit to send two of its scientists up in Virgin’s SpaceShipTwo and is buying six seats from XCOR. It is probable that, in a few years, hundreds of suborbital flights could be taking off every year. As Physics Today reported last October , NASA is also interested in taking advantage of commercial launch opportunities. Through its Commercial Reusable Suborbital Research (CRuSR) program, the agency pays companies to take experiments into space.