Space Adventures CEO Eric Anderson tells SPACE NEWS that his company is in "serious talks" with Bigelow Aerospace about offering tourists flights aboard SA-owned Soyuz spacecraft to a Bigelow station in low Earth orbit. Bigelow is currently developing inflatable habitats-- modules that expand in space, allowing them to be launched atop conventional rockets. Two test versions are currently in orbit.
Anderson (no relation to me) gave no details, but he did point out that adventure tourism is the fastest growing sector of the booming tourism industry. He also said there are perhaps 20,000,000 millionaires alive today, and SA is having no problem selling its tourist flights to the International Space Station.
Though Anderson set no time frame for such a project, Bigelow plans to have man-rated modules ready to go by roughly 2013. Price? Anderson didn't say, but a flight to ISS is being bumped up to $30 million-- an extra $15 million can get you a spacewalk-- and a looping flight around the Moon is currently tagged at $100 million.
A stay at the first Earth-orbiting hotel, depending on various factors, should probably come in at something around $50 million for a week to ten days. That's strictly my number.
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