NASA Holidays Cost £34m. Wow! We’ll Take 2 Tickets.

Brits love their summer holidays and are willing to spend to make sure they get that once-in-a-lifetime trip. A survey conducted by Confused.com revealed that, for an average family, the cost of a two week summer break is as much as £4,792. How much do you and your family spend on your annual summer holidays – and how much do you think this compares with a sojourn on a space station?

Sarah Brightman, the 54 year old British soprano singer and star of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ‘Phantom of the Opera’, is set to blast off into space on a $52m return trip to the International Space Station in October, according to NASA. This 10-day trip aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule is being arranged by Space Adventures, a privately-owned American company.

Founded in 1998 with a mission to make spaceflight a reality for tourists, Space Adventures Ltd. is the world’s premier private spaceflight company offering real-life space experiences to their clients. Working closely with professional astronauts and cosmonauts, they are the only company to date to have sent self-funded individuals into space.

Brightman prepares for space adventure

Crewmember and astronaut Sergey Volkov will be flying the Soyuz capsule that will carry Brightman and her fellow passenger, European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Andreas Mogensen to their destination, revealed NASA flight director Emily Nelson on Thursday during a press conference broadcasted from Houston’s Johnson Space Centre.

It is the first time that the $100bn research lab space station, which floats 260 miles (418 km) above the Earth, has welcomed a professional singer, and only the 8th time for it to host a tourist visitor.

The station has welcomed some prestigious visitors, including Microsoft Co-founder Charles Simonyi, who has made two visits to the station, and Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte, the last tourist visitor whose 11-day stay aboard the station in 2009 cost an estimated $35 million.

Russia’s ITAR-TASS news service reported that Brightman’s 9-month training program for the trip, which was planned to begin this Thursday, had to be delayed while she recovered from a cold.

The Russian Soyuz capsules have been fully booked transporting crewmembers to and from the space station since 2011, when NASA stopped operating its own space shuttles. A seat aboard a Soyuz has become available this autumn for a paying passenger because Russia need to provide a new capsule to ferry home two station crewmembers who are planning an astonishing and previously unseen year-long stay in space.

But I Don’t Have £34 Million!!!

Sure, who does? But, here’s the next best thing. Pitch up your tent on Tuesday 27th January and with a decent set of binoculars you might just see asteroid 2004 BL86 pass within 745,000 miles of the Earth’s surface. Interested in finding out more? Read: How Can I Watch Asteroid 2004 BL86?