Health & Fitness
You Too Can Be a Space Tourist!
XCOR's Lynx will take you to the edge of space and back again. But no tickets are sold onboard. Please purchase your ticket before you board the vehicle.
Please purchase your ticket before... waaaayyyy before... you board the vehicle.
Click here to access the video walkabout of the spacecraft.
Expected to start in 2014, the trip to the edge of space will cost ninety five thousand dollars. Today, sitting in the Lynx was free.
Well, perhaps not THE Lynx, but a full size exhibition version was at the Long Beach Convention Center - at the Space Tech Expo's Space Experience Park - today. I took full advantage of the opportunity to ham it up for the camera.
The design and manufacturing company, XCOR Aerospace, has already sold over 150 tickets at a price of $95K dollars (yes, ninety five thousand dollars). Well... actually... they have sold some tickets and space tourism companies, under special permission from the Space Expedition Corporation (SXC), are selling the majority. Space travel agents, known as Space Agents, are packaging travel to the take-off site (horizontal take-off experience), several days' preparation, earth hotel and more with the actual ride.
The ride lasts 30 minutes, with 5-6 of those being outward bound, some minutes of weightlessness and the remainder of the time reserved for the safe return to the swirling blue marble.
Interested?
A list of space agents authorized to sell Lynx rides is available on the SpaceXC site. Several of these companies are dedicated to the Lynx flights. A few, such as Florida company Incredible Adventures, however, have been tailoring to the adventure-seeker for some time and provide a myriad of adventure possibilities. You can fly in a MIG over Moscow or South Africa, a fighter plane, make your own Top Gun-like movie, and deep sea dive in a one-of a kind submarine,
For those interested in covert and special ops, there are adventures for you as well!
If your budget is like mine (severely constrained) or as you wait for the day of your "big trip", you may choose to print out these very nice, free, paper models of the L-39 "Albatross", the MIG-29 "Fulcrum" and/or the MIG-25 "Foxbat" and fly them around the room.
Prepare for take-off!