Moscow: A Russian privately owned company has plans to build a reusable suborbital tourist spacecraft estimated to cost around US$150 million.
Russia’s space agency Roscosmos has given approval to the company CosmosCourse for the technical design specifications of the project.
CosmoCourse CEO Pavel Pushkin told Sputnik New Agency, he came up with the idea of suborbital tourism back in 2013 when he was working at Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center.
"We were reviewing various concepts of commercial space rockets and came up with the idea of launching people into space via suborbital trajectory."
"We spent a lot of time explaining who we are and what we’re working on to Roscosmos and they listened to us. The agency’s head Igor Anatolyevich Komarov gave the order to provide assistance to our project," Pushkin said.
The company intends to begin space launches by the end of 2020, using the Kapustin Yar testing range in Russia’s Astrakhan Region as a base.
QNA
