KosmoKurs

Roskosmos has approved the creation of a reusable rocket for space tourism. Private space company "KosmoKurs" first in Russia has received permission to develop the project of creation of reusable system for flying tourists into space, reports on Friday TASS referring to the director general of "Kosmokursa" Paul Pushkin. Terms of reference have been agreed with the Russian Space Agency, its CEO Igor Komarov, "with a bang" took the project, Pushkin said 03 April 2016. The complex, which intends to develop a "KosmoKurs", consists of a reusable suborbital launch vehicle and reusable suborbital spacecraft, it said on its website. The flights will be short: the shuttle tourists will rise to the same height, which rose and Yuri Gagarin (about 300 km) and then descend to the ground.

The company "Kosmokurs" was established in July 2014. startups Dates set itself fairly rigid: this summer to protect preliminary design of the state corporation "Roscosmos" (which, after the recent merger of the Federal Space Agency and the Joint Rocket and Space Corporation serves the industry regulator), in 2018 - to begin testing individual systems, in 2019 to develop the entire complex. And in 2020, if all goes well, fly. The current estimate of the project - $ 150 million.

Co-owner "Kosmokursa" Pavel Pushkin hopes to build a reusable launch vehicle and the passenger capsule for $ 150 million. The investor, according to him, is a Russian billionaire. The development of individual systems, components and assemblies will be ordered to enterprises of Roskosmos, "Kosmokurs" acts integrator for the project

"Kosmokurs" promises that a spacecraft can take on board for 6 people, and the flight will last about 15 minutes, of which 5-6 minutes, tourists can be in a state of weightlessness. The first tour company promises to spend in 2020, it costs around $ 250 000. For flight need good health: the applicant must be able to withstand five-time overload. Before the flight, the future tourists will have to undergo a medical examination and a three-day training course.

For each flight will cost $ 200-250 thousand. (Foreign competitors say the same price level, so everything is quite "market average".) Tickets space "Kosmokurs" still does not sell, though willing, in the words of Pushkin, is already there. Four days before the start of the tourists and the mourners are asked to arrive at the launch site, where they will travel "daughter" of "Kosmokursa": future astronauts will need to be trained, to pick up suits, work out in a centrifuge, to pass a secondary medical check-initiation ritual to the astronauts and to give press conference. Then - start, "jump" to a height of 200 km in about 14 minutes, 5-6 minutes in a state of weightlessness and capsules descent to Earth.

The idea of space tourism has arisen in the end of the last century. "Challenger" The first such tourist was supposed to be an American teacher Christa McAuliffe, but she died at the start of reusable spacecraft. Later, space tourism program has been developed in the USSR, and later - in Russia: on the one-time Soviet ships and Russian production about a dozen tourists visited the station "Mir" and the International Space Station.

In the middle of the last decade, the development of space tourism interested private companies that have started to develop the space shuttle reusable. So, after the first successful launch of a reusable private spacecraft in 2003, the company Virgin Galactic of British billionaire Charles Branson announced the creation of the ship SpaceShipTwo, intended solely for tourist purposes. Since 2010, the company produced a number of successful tests of the ship, but the next flight in 2014 ended in disaster as a result of which one pilot was killed and the other was seriously injured.

According to the "Kosmokursa» Kartoteka.ru service, was founded by two individuals, not appearing in the list of billionaires: Paul himself Pushkin (30%) and Alexander Tukatsinsky (70%). It can be assumed that the second co-founder of both time and represents the interests of the mysterious investor. And then, perhaps, you should seek the answer to his track record. At various times Tukatsinsky was a member of the board of directors of large companies such as UMMC, "KRU", "Transmashholding" and "Transgroup". This structure, controlled by businessman Iskander Makhmudov (?29 on the Forbes list, the state - $ 3.5 billion) and its business partners - Andrew Kozitsyn (?45, $ 2 billion) and Andrei Bokarev (?104, $ 0,9 billion).

The motives of the investor can speculate and psychological way. Over the past 10-15 years, successful entrepreneurs, earned capital far from the space industries, all obsessed with the development of private space exploration. Elon Musk, co-founder of the PayPal payment system, created space SpaceX corporation that in 2012, delivers cargo to the ISS. Co-owner of id Software (game developer) John Carmack - the company Armadillo Aerospace, owner of budget hotel chains Robert Bigelow - corporation Bigelow Aerospace. And that's not to mention the already mentioned Jeff Bezos (online retailer Amazon) and Richard Branson (Virgin Group). All of them can be called representatives of the "impatient generation".