Tourists, including a Canadian, fly to the space station

SpaceX will send four space travelers, including one Canadian, to the International Space Station (ISS) this Friday (April 8) for a 10-day stay.

The AX-1 mission will launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at around 11:15 a.m. with Michael Lopez-Alegría, a commander and former NASA astronaut who has been in space four times. He will be accompanied by three tourists, Canadian Mark Pathy – resident of Mavrik Corp. and chairman of Stingray Group, and Israeli businessman Eytan Stibbe and American Larry Connor.

This is not the first time tourists have visited ISS. In 2009, the then boss of Cirque du Soleil Guy Laliberté made such a trip. But at that time, it was the Russians who transported the traveler on a Soyuz rocket. This time, the company is totally American.

Such a trip aboard a SpaceX Falcon rocket and ISS is not for everyone. It would cost $50 million (US) for each traveler to reserve a seat.

This fee may seem and is exorbitant, but you have to understand the costs associated with such a trip to understand the hefty bill that comes with it. NASA explains that it costs $2000 per day per person for food. To that, you have to add the cost of transporting supplies , which amounts to between $88,000 and $164,000 per day per person. NASA adds 5.2 million per visitor for the supervision that the astronauts provide on board the space station and NASA ‘s fees amount to $4.8 million (US). The rest of the bill is split into profits for the trip organizers.

This trip marks the second SpaceX tourist trip to space. The first time, last September, the travelers did not go to the ISS. Instead, they continued their journey beyond the space station, 575 km from Earth.