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It’s not clear what exactly the profile of these people is. The article says they’re paying their way but also that they’ll be doing experiments?

pocketarc 3y ago
They're all military people from different countries; andsoitis's link has links to all their profiles. So it might be a commercial flight, but it's not random people.
justrealist 3y ago
Italy, Sweden and Turkey are paying their way. They are all military pilots. They are just paying for seats with Axiom directly rather than bartering for seats with NASA.
- wrsh07 3y ago
  Tbh this seems good for all of those countries (and good for Axiom!) Feels pretty win/win. I have some trepidation about letting capitalism decide our priorities in space, but so far it is helping us make really exciting progress
  - kiba 3y ago
    Businesses like SpaceX and Blue Origin are really prestige/passion projects, not normal capitalist enterprises which are all just about making a buck.
    - nordsieck 3y ago
      > Businesses like SpaceX and Blue Origin are really prestige/passion projects, not normal capitalist enterprises which are all just about making a buck. Maybe that's true of Blue Origin, but you're going to need a lot more evidence to back up that claim in regards to SpaceX. The best estimate is that they make a >50% gross margin on Falcon 9 launches (at least for external customers). And while they spend a lot on Starlink launches, they're also making quite a lot of Starlink revenue at this point. It's certainly true that they're dumping a lot of R&D money into Starship. But that strategy is how they earned their current medium/heavy lift launch market dominance, so I can't really fault them for that. And if Starship does work out, it could set them up for a functional monopoly on launch for decades. Not to mention dramatically decreasing their internal Starlink costs.
      - timschmidt 3y ago
        With SpaceX, colonizing Mars is the passion / prestige project. Elon and his people are extraordinarily good at finding ways to make all the dependent sub-projects profitable while working toward the larger goal. Which is as impressive as the engineering.
        kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
        Mars colonization is not their business. Launching commercial payloads is. Everything else is just marketing.
        timschmidt 3y ago
        Cynicism like this is tiring. To you, the moon landing must have been just marketing until Neil Armstrong stepped off the last ladder rung, but there was a decade of intense engineering effort leading up to that. You are seeing that intense engineering effort toward a Mars landing now. One does not build the largest and most powerful rocket ever constructed simply to deliver packages.
        soperj 3y ago
        > With SpaceX, colonizing Mars is the passion / prestige project. That's more just a out there goal to motivate people who are motivated by that. Still have had zero launches to Mars.
        timschmidt 3y ago
        Cynicism like this is tiring. To you, the moon landing must have been just marketing until Neil Armstrong stepped off the last ladder rung, but there was a decade of intense engineering effort leading up to that. You are seeing that intense engineering effort toward a Mars landing now. One does not build the largest and most powerful rocket ever constructed simply to deliver packages.
      - dotnet00 3y ago
        Being a passion project doesn't preclude making a profit. Especially if you're not being stupidly short sighted. Plus, other companies are having a hard enough time competing already (even small launch is facing tough competition from the F9 rideshares), if SpaceX dropped their prices too low, it'd quickly run most of the launch market out of business, which is not in the interests of a company that wants to improve accessibility to space. This is also why even if Starship's cost targets pan out, they'll likely just charge slightly lower than competing options for the specific payload.
    - wilg 3y ago
      People should really look more at hacking capitalism to do big exciting things, like SpaceX, IMO.
      - wrsh07 3y ago
        I completely agree! I think it's generally related to the ai alignment problem, fwiw The trick is that we need to ban fraud aggressively and then reduce the profits from endeavors we want to discourage (not sure if there are good general mechanisms. I mean we use taxes for this sometimes. Imagine if one wanted to reduce the collection of user data if instead of gdpr you created a data tax!) I'm also very interested to hear what projects you think might be good candidates to do this with!
    - panick21_ 3y ago
      For Blue Origin it is true, they are not making money and a privately funded. For SpaceX it just so hilariously wrong. SpaceX did get seed money from Musk, about 90 million. The rest is venture funded just like every other successful company. SpaceX is a very normal capitalist company. Musk has not invested more of his own money into it. SpaceX is making money and raising money to fund future projects. One could maybe make an argument that Musk longer has ambitions to do passion projects, but he has never perused these without building the company in a capitalist way first. Because he knows that if the company isn't successful, non of the long term plans are possible. > not normal capitalist enterprises which are all just about making a buck Every capitalist enterprise has owners, the owners decide what they should do. Often but not always this is 'making a buck'.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - WhereIsTheTruth 3y ago
    > Feels pretty win/win. Please develop this further, what Italy has to win? other than the scientific breakthrough that is to spend tax payer money to "buy a seat" > is helping us make really exciting progress us? you meant the USA? progress? like? I don't recall Italy working on any similar projects, how will these seats help italians get a return of investment? Sounds like an attempt at masking subsidies from the EU, at the expense of ESA I wonder who's in the lobby "SpaceX accuses Arianespace of unfair competition" - https://www.lesechos.fr/industrie-services/air-defense/exclusif-spacex-accuse-arianespace-de-concurrence-deloyale-992893 https://www.lesechos.fr/industrie-services/air-defense/exclu... "Elon Musk's company complains about subsidies from France and Europe, and calls on Washington to act." > I have some trepidation about letting capitalism decide our priorities in space, but so far it is helping us make really exciting progress Oh, the irony! In the meantime: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiangong_space_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiangong_space_station - https://consumer.huawei.com/za/community/details/Huawei-Mate-60-Pro-is-the-world-s-first-satellite-calling-phone/topicId_280286/ https://consumer.huawei.com/za/community/details/Huawei-Mate... - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Lunar_Exploration_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Lunar_Exploration_Prog... - https://www.space.com/china-landspace-ready-for-reusable-rocket-test https://www.space.com/china-landspace-ready-for-reusable-roc...
    - ABS 3y ago
      1) go to https://www.axiomspace.com/missions/ax3/research https://www.axiomspace.com/missions/ax3/research 2) click on the Italian flag 3) read about all the experiments, who funds them, why they will be run/what they hope to learn 4) go to 2 and change flag for the other countries you will find both public and private experiments/initiatives in there
      - WhereIsTheTruth 3y ago
        Exactly, this further prove my point, masked subsidy from the EU ;)
        ABS 3y ago
- nordsieck 3y ago
  > They are just paying for seats with Axiom directly rather than bartering for seats with NASA. To be fair to those countries, it's typically ESA that barters with NASA, not the individual member countries. And it seems like astronauts are selected in rough proportion to national contribution (generally in line with the National Return policy). Paying for a private seat may be a more efficient way for smaller countries to get people into space.
  - dmurray 3y ago
    Is Turkey even an ESA member? I don't think it's clear they'd be welcomed. This seems like a sensible way for them to dip their toes into having a space program.
    - mrtksn 3y ago
      The Turkish one is essentially for propaganda, being "the first Turk in space" right before the elections(although he is supposed to run some experiments for the Turkish Universities). It's still nice though, maybe will inspire some kids to pursue careers in science but there's an ongoing debate in Turkey if he is just a space tourist(it's complicated). A fun thing is, He is from the secular demographic and his firsts words were to commemorate Ataturk and the islamists and seculars instantly switched place; Now the pro-government people say He is a space tourist and the secular opposition says he is a hero :)
      - atahanacar 3y ago
        >He is from the secular demographic This is an understatement. He was purged from the military and jailed by Islamists/Gülenists/Erdoğan using fabricated evidence and cultist judges, for "attempting a secularist coup". I don't think it is "essentially" for propaganda. This would happen regardless, propaganda is just a side-benefit. Saying that he's "just a space tourist" would be like calling scientists that go to Antarctica for experiments "polar tourists". It is definitely overblown by the government media though.
- mezeek 3y ago
  the difference is that NASA only has seats for 6-month ISS missions, not a couple weeks like Axiom missions. Totally different.
dotnet00 3y ago
The setup with the Axiom flights is that it's private access to a space station and associated capabilities before Axiom's own modules are ready (which are intended to start off as part of the ISS, eventually detaching and leaving their own private space station). Idea being that this way Axiom has some revenue and is able to gain some operational experience. Since the ticket is expensive and at least one seat is taken up by someone with spaceflight experience and AFAIK has high demand relative to the number of flights available, the people going up are doing at least something productive.
diggan 3y ago
I'm not sure about the others, but the Swedish guy was "selected" from lots of different people, so just saying that "they're paying their way" seems slightly reductive: > He was selected in November 2022 from over 22,500 applicants to join a new European astronaut group of 17 lucky recipients. https://www.rymdstyrelsen.se/upptack-rymden/bloggen/2024/01/marcus-wandt/ https://www.rymdstyrelsen.se/upptack-rymden/bloggen/2024/01/... That page has lots of useful information about the project itself (although in Swedish, may DeepL et al help you), like: > One of the two Swedish projects involves stem cell research and is led by Elena Kozlova, Professor of Regenerative Neurobiology at Uppsala University. Stem cells have previously been sent into space by sounding rockets and exposed to a few minutes of microgravity, showing that stem cells have a greater capacity to divide and develop into mature cells than they do under normal conditions on Earth. Now Marcus Wandt is taking stem cells into space for two weeks. > In the project, Orbital Architecture, researchers at KTH Royal Institute of Technology want to investigate how people's physical and mental health is affected by staying in confined spaces for long periods of time. The researchers will analyze Marcus Wandt's stress, cognitive performance, heart activity and movements and compare data collected from different parts of the space station to understand how the design of space environments affects the astronauts' thinking and stress levels.
- DylanSp 3y ago
  To elaborate, the Swedish astronaut, Marcus Wandt, is part of ESA's "reserve astronaut" pool; the ESA press release [1] mentions that this "is composed of astronaut candidates who were successful throughout the entire selection process but cannot be recruited at this point in time." [1] https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration/ESA_presents_new_generation_of_astronauts https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Ex...
  - TMWNN 3y ago
    ESA announced Wandt's selection in November 2022. Now he's in orbit, less than 15 months later! This is the fastest time between selection and orbit in history that I know of. No doubt there are full-time ESA astronauts announced with Wandt who are now dumbfounded that a backup is flying before them, not to mention those in earlier batches. This sort of thing has happened in the US, too. When NASA began flying payload specialists <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payload_specialist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payload_specialist> on the shuttle, that program included people who had been turned down by the NASA astronaut program, like Charles Walker and Byron Lichtenberg. They got to fly before many who had been selected in the same intakes they themselves had been rejected from! Walker flew three times (!) in fifteen months, and Lichtenberg flew twice. (Walker was selected for his first shuttle flight in May 1983 and the first attempt to launch was in June 1984, so he would have been the record holder had that happened; he went up in August.)
DylanSp 3y ago
Ars Technica's article [1] has more background. The commander is a former NASA astronaut with a lot of experience who now works for Axiom; the three passengers are military officers whose governments have contracted with Axiom. [1] https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/01/all-european-crew-takes-aim-on-international-space-station/ https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/01/all-european-crew-take...
- hef19898 3y ago
  Axiom, like the space ship in Wall-e? Heck, why not I guess... Considering the crew, and who actually pays for the launch, I guess commercial or sub-contracted are bettwr terms to discribe the mission. Private space mission aoinda way to much like rich dudes space tourism. Military astronauts and a selected scientist using a non-government launch and space craft, commanded by a proper, and experienced, mission commander is a different sport all together.
  - DylanSp 3y ago
    To be fair to reporters, Axiom does both; their first mission had three space tourists as passengers, their second mission had one space tourist and two passengers from the Saudi government (a military pilot and a biomedical researcher).
    - hef19898 3y ago
      As far as headlines go, there are worse...
  - dotnet00 3y ago
    Even if it was private space tourism, what's the problem? They'd be spending their massive wealth funding further development of space technology. This isn't a virgin galactic style technological dead end death trap. As prices come down for access to space, there is obviously going to be a point between only being affordable by governments and being affordable by everyone, where only governments and particularly rich people can afford it.
charles_f 3y ago
They're pretty easy to look for: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Wandt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Wandt - pilot, masters of electronics, and ESA reserve astronaut. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alper_Gezeravc%C4%B1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alper_Gezeravc%C4%B1 - pilot, with some electronics studies. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Villadei https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Villadei - pilot, masters in aerospace and astronautic engineering. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_L%C3%B3pez-Alegr%C3%ADa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_L%C3%B3pez-Alegr%C3%AD... - pilot, masters in aeronautical engineers. Flew on space shuttle 3 times, second longest EVA, fifth longest duration in space. The mission is private, but it's sponsored by industry (notably Saab from what I've seen). The astronauts seem to be reasonably professional, and the mission goal oriented. It doesn't seem to be one of these stunts where rich people go to space and pretend to hold a test tube to give a dimension above "I had too much money so I burnt the GDP of a small country and its carbon emissions to spend a vacation in space".
bradly 3y ago
> The article says they’re paying their way but also that they’ll be doing experiments? When I worked at Apple we "hired" the ISS. Astronauts were trained and scheduled and would work for us. The work was not anything science related. I'm not sure how common this is, though.
ukuuru 3y ago
Turkish guy is part of Turkish Space Program efforts run by Turkish Space Agency. He is a military pilot selected among many applicants to be first astronaut from Turkey. Also they are running to be the sixth country to land on moon with the help of SpaceX.

pocketarc 3y ago

They're all military people from different countries; andsoitis's link has links to all their profiles. So it might be a commercial flight, but it's not random people.

justrealist 3y ago

Italy, Sweden and Turkey are paying their way. They are all military pilots. They are just paying for seats with Axiom directly rather than bartering for seats with NASA.

wrsh07 3y ago
Tbh this seems good for all of those countries (and good for Axiom!) Feels pretty win/win. I have some trepidation about letting capitalism decide our priorities in space, but so far it is helping us make really exciting progress
- kiba 3y ago
  Businesses like SpaceX and Blue Origin are really prestige/passion projects, not normal capitalist enterprises which are all just about making a buck.
  - nordsieck 3y ago
    > Businesses like SpaceX and Blue Origin are really prestige/passion projects, not normal capitalist enterprises which are all just about making a buck. Maybe that's true of Blue Origin, but you're going to need a lot more evidence to back up that claim in regards to SpaceX. The best estimate is that they make a >50% gross margin on Falcon 9 launches (at least for external customers). And while they spend a lot on Starlink launches, they're also making quite a lot of Starlink revenue at this point. It's certainly true that they're dumping a lot of R&D money into Starship. But that strategy is how they earned their current medium/heavy lift launch market dominance, so I can't really fault them for that. And if Starship does work out, it could set them up for a functional monopoly on launch for decades. Not to mention dramatically decreasing their internal Starlink costs.
    - timschmidt 3y ago
      With SpaceX, colonizing Mars is the passion / prestige project. Elon and his people are extraordinarily good at finding ways to make all the dependent sub-projects profitable while working toward the larger goal. Which is as impressive as the engineering.
      - kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
        Mars colonization is not their business. Launching commercial payloads is. Everything else is just marketing.
        timschmidt 3y ago
        Cynicism like this is tiring. To you, the moon landing must have been just marketing until Neil Armstrong stepped off the last ladder rung, but there was a decade of intense engineering effort leading up to that. You are seeing that intense engineering effort toward a Mars landing now. One does not build the largest and most powerful rocket ever constructed simply to deliver packages.
      - soperj 3y ago
        > With SpaceX, colonizing Mars is the passion / prestige project. That's more just a out there goal to motivate people who are motivated by that. Still have had zero launches to Mars.
        timschmidt 3y ago
        Cynicism like this is tiring. To you, the moon landing must have been just marketing until Neil Armstrong stepped off the last ladder rung, but there was a decade of intense engineering effort leading up to that. You are seeing that intense engineering effort toward a Mars landing now. One does not build the largest and most powerful rocket ever constructed simply to deliver packages.
    - dotnet00 3y ago
      Being a passion project doesn't preclude making a profit. Especially if you're not being stupidly short sighted. Plus, other companies are having a hard enough time competing already (even small launch is facing tough competition from the F9 rideshares), if SpaceX dropped their prices too low, it'd quickly run most of the launch market out of business, which is not in the interests of a company that wants to improve accessibility to space. This is also why even if Starship's cost targets pan out, they'll likely just charge slightly lower than competing options for the specific payload.
  - wilg 3y ago
    People should really look more at hacking capitalism to do big exciting things, like SpaceX, IMO.
    - wrsh07 3y ago
      I completely agree! I think it's generally related to the ai alignment problem, fwiw The trick is that we need to ban fraud aggressively and then reduce the profits from endeavors we want to discourage (not sure if there are good general mechanisms. I mean we use taxes for this sometimes. Imagine if one wanted to reduce the collection of user data if instead of gdpr you created a data tax!) I'm also very interested to hear what projects you think might be good candidates to do this with!
  - panick21_ 3y ago
    For Blue Origin it is true, they are not making money and a privately funded. For SpaceX it just so hilariously wrong. SpaceX did get seed money from Musk, about 90 million. The rest is venture funded just like every other successful company. SpaceX is a very normal capitalist company. Musk has not invested more of his own money into it. SpaceX is making money and raising money to fund future projects. One could maybe make an argument that Musk longer has ambitions to do passion projects, but he has never perused these without building the company in a capitalist way first. Because he knows that if the company isn't successful, non of the long term plans are possible. > not normal capitalist enterprises which are all just about making a buck Every capitalist enterprise has owners, the owners decide what they should do. Often but not always this is 'making a buck'.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- WhereIsTheTruth 3y ago
  > Feels pretty win/win. Please develop this further, what Italy has to win? other than the scientific breakthrough that is to spend tax payer money to "buy a seat" > is helping us make really exciting progress us? you meant the USA? progress? like? I don't recall Italy working on any similar projects, how will these seats help italians get a return of investment? Sounds like an attempt at masking subsidies from the EU, at the expense of ESA I wonder who's in the lobby "SpaceX accuses Arianespace of unfair competition" - https://www.lesechos.fr/industrie-services/air-defense/exclusif-spacex-accuse-arianespace-de-concurrence-deloyale-992893 https://www.lesechos.fr/industrie-services/air-defense/exclu... "Elon Musk's company complains about subsidies from France and Europe, and calls on Washington to act." > I have some trepidation about letting capitalism decide our priorities in space, but so far it is helping us make really exciting progress Oh, the irony! In the meantime: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiangong_space_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiangong_space_station - https://consumer.huawei.com/za/community/details/Huawei-Mate-60-Pro-is-the-world-s-first-satellite-calling-phone/topicId_280286/ https://consumer.huawei.com/za/community/details/Huawei-Mate... - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Lunar_Exploration_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Lunar_Exploration_Prog... - https://www.space.com/china-landspace-ready-for-reusable-rocket-test https://www.space.com/china-landspace-ready-for-reusable-roc...
  - ABS 3y ago
    1) go to https://www.axiomspace.com/missions/ax3/research https://www.axiomspace.com/missions/ax3/research 2) click on the Italian flag 3) read about all the experiments, who funds them, why they will be run/what they hope to learn 4) go to 2 and change flag for the other countries you will find both public and private experiments/initiatives in there
    - WhereIsTheTruth 3y ago
      Exactly, this further prove my point, masked subsidy from the EU ;)
      - ABS 3y ago
nordsieck 3y ago
> They are just paying for seats with Axiom directly rather than bartering for seats with NASA. To be fair to those countries, it's typically ESA that barters with NASA, not the individual member countries. And it seems like astronauts are selected in rough proportion to national contribution (generally in line with the National Return policy). Paying for a private seat may be a more efficient way for smaller countries to get people into space.
- dmurray 3y ago
  Is Turkey even an ESA member? I don't think it's clear they'd be welcomed. This seems like a sensible way for them to dip their toes into having a space program.
  - mrtksn 3y ago
    The Turkish one is essentially for propaganda, being "the first Turk in space" right before the elections(although he is supposed to run some experiments for the Turkish Universities). It's still nice though, maybe will inspire some kids to pursue careers in science but there's an ongoing debate in Turkey if he is just a space tourist(it's complicated). A fun thing is, He is from the secular demographic and his firsts words were to commemorate Ataturk and the islamists and seculars instantly switched place; Now the pro-government people say He is a space tourist and the secular opposition says he is a hero :)
    - atahanacar 3y ago
      >He is from the secular demographic This is an understatement. He was purged from the military and jailed by Islamists/Gülenists/Erdoğan using fabricated evidence and cultist judges, for "attempting a secularist coup". I don't think it is "essentially" for propaganda. This would happen regardless, propaganda is just a side-benefit. Saying that he's "just a space tourist" would be like calling scientists that go to Antarctica for experiments "polar tourists". It is definitely overblown by the government media though.
mezeek 3y ago
the difference is that NASA only has seats for 6-month ISS missions, not a couple weeks like Axiom missions. Totally different.

dotnet00 3y ago

The setup with the Axiom flights is that it's private access to a space station and associated capabilities before Axiom's own modules are ready (which are intended to start off as part of the ISS, eventually detaching and leaving their own private space station). Idea being that this way Axiom has some revenue and is able to gain some operational experience. Since the ticket is expensive and at least one seat is taken up by someone with spaceflight experience and AFAIK has high demand relative to the number of flights available, the people going up are doing at least something productive.

diggan 3y ago

I'm not sure about the others, but the Swedish guy was "selected" from lots of different people, so just saying that "they're paying their way" seems slightly reductive: > He was selected in November 2022 from over 22,500 applicants to join a new European astronaut group of 17 lucky recipients. https://www.rymdstyrelsen.se/upptack-rymden/bloggen/2024/01/marcus-wandt/ https://www.rymdstyrelsen.se/upptack-rymden/bloggen/2024/01/... That page has lots of useful information about the project itself (although in Swedish, may DeepL et al help you), like: > One of the two Swedish projects involves stem cell research and is led by Elena Kozlova, Professor of Regenerative Neurobiology at Uppsala University. Stem cells have previously been sent into space by sounding rockets and exposed to a few minutes of microgravity, showing that stem cells have a greater capacity to divide and develop into mature cells than they do under normal conditions on Earth. Now Marcus Wandt is taking stem cells into space for two weeks. > In the project, Orbital Architecture, researchers at KTH Royal Institute of Technology want to investigate how people's physical and mental health is affected by staying in confined spaces for long periods of time. The researchers will analyze Marcus Wandt's stress, cognitive performance, heart activity and movements and compare data collected from different parts of the space station to understand how the design of space environments affects the astronauts' thinking and stress levels.

DylanSp 3y ago
To elaborate, the Swedish astronaut, Marcus Wandt, is part of ESA's "reserve astronaut" pool; the ESA press release [1] mentions that this "is composed of astronaut candidates who were successful throughout the entire selection process but cannot be recruited at this point in time." [1] https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration/ESA_presents_new_generation_of_astronauts https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Ex...
- TMWNN 3y ago
  ESA announced Wandt's selection in November 2022. Now he's in orbit, less than 15 months later! This is the fastest time between selection and orbit in history that I know of. No doubt there are full-time ESA astronauts announced with Wandt who are now dumbfounded that a backup is flying before them, not to mention those in earlier batches. This sort of thing has happened in the US, too. When NASA began flying payload specialists <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payload_specialist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payload_specialist> on the shuttle, that program included people who had been turned down by the NASA astronaut program, like Charles Walker and Byron Lichtenberg. They got to fly before many who had been selected in the same intakes they themselves had been rejected from! Walker flew three times (!) in fifteen months, and Lichtenberg flew twice. (Walker was selected for his first shuttle flight in May 1983 and the first attempt to launch was in June 1984, so he would have been the record holder had that happened; he went up in August.)

DylanSp 3y ago

Ars Technica's article [1] has more background. The commander is a former NASA astronaut with a lot of experience who now works for Axiom; the three passengers are military officers whose governments have contracted with Axiom. [1] https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/01/all-european-crew-takes-aim-on-international-space-station/ https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/01/all-european-crew-take...

hef19898 3y ago
Axiom, like the space ship in Wall-e? Heck, why not I guess... Considering the crew, and who actually pays for the launch, I guess commercial or sub-contracted are bettwr terms to discribe the mission. Private space mission aoinda way to much like rich dudes space tourism. Military astronauts and a selected scientist using a non-government launch and space craft, commanded by a proper, and experienced, mission commander is a different sport all together.
- DylanSp 3y ago
  To be fair to reporters, Axiom does both; their first mission had three space tourists as passengers, their second mission had one space tourist and two passengers from the Saudi government (a military pilot and a biomedical researcher).
  - hef19898 3y ago
    As far as headlines go, there are worse...
- dotnet00 3y ago
  Even if it was private space tourism, what's the problem? They'd be spending their massive wealth funding further development of space technology. This isn't a virgin galactic style technological dead end death trap. As prices come down for access to space, there is obviously going to be a point between only being affordable by governments and being affordable by everyone, where only governments and particularly rich people can afford it.

charles_f 3y ago

They're pretty easy to look for: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Wandt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Wandt - pilot, masters of electronics, and ESA reserve astronaut. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alper_Gezeravc%C4%B1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alper_Gezeravc%C4%B1 - pilot, with some electronics studies. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Villadei https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Villadei - pilot, masters in aerospace and astronautic engineering. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_L%C3%B3pez-Alegr%C3%ADa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_L%C3%B3pez-Alegr%C3%AD... - pilot, masters in aeronautical engineers. Flew on space shuttle 3 times, second longest EVA, fifth longest duration in space. The mission is private, but it's sponsored by industry (notably Saab from what I've seen). The astronauts seem to be reasonably professional, and the mission goal oriented. It doesn't seem to be one of these stunts where rich people go to space and pretend to hold a test tube to give a dimension above "I had too much money so I burnt the GDP of a small country and its carbon emissions to spend a vacation in space".

bradly 3y ago

> The article says they’re paying their way but also that they’ll be doing experiments? When I worked at Apple we "hired" the ISS. Astronauts were trained and scheduled and would work for us. The work was not anything science related. I'm not sure how common this is, though.

ukuuru 3y ago

Turkish guy is part of Turkish Space Program efforts run by Turkish Space Agency. He is a military pilot selected among many applicants to be first astronaut from Turkey. Also they are running to be the sixth country to land on moon with the help of SpaceX.