Axiom’s Second Flight Paves the Way for a Commercial Space Station
WiredMay 22, 2023
The second-ever private mission to the International Space Station (ISS) took off aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. on Sunday. Aboard the mission from [US firm] Axiom Space was Saudi Arabia's first two astronauts to travel to an orbital laboratory, Rayyanah Barnawi, a breast cancer researcher, and fighter pilot Ali Al-Qarni.
The team also includes former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson and John Shoffner, a businessman from Tennessee who is serving as the pilot. They were planned to reach the ISS Monday morning and return a week later, landing off the coast of Florida.
This is the beginning of not only privatized space tourism but the creation of space stations other than the ISS. Axiom plans to connect its own modules to the ISS by 2025 and then detach them to create a completely separate outer space laboratory. This flight has also shown the potential for space exploration companies to bring countries together and provide access to space travel to previously excluded groups.
Space tourism is a rich man's game, and it will remain that way for a long time. Even the shorter and much quicker trips, like Virgin Galactic owner Richard Branson's flight into orbit, cost $250K. As for spending time on the ISS, that has and will continue to cost tens of millions of dollars. Space ventures continue to be a pet project of the wealthy.