You can now sleep in NASA’s Space station for just $35,000 per night

Private companies will have to pay NASA about $35,000 a night per passenger to sleep in the station’s beds and use its amenities.

It is not hidden knowledge that if you want to become a NASA astronaut then becoming a Harvard student is as simple as changing your light bulb. Now, you can venture into space just like all these hard-worked astronauts. That is right, regular Nigerians can now go to space without all that astronaut training. Before anyone dares however, he/she has to make sure that they have  plenty millions to blow on that big vacation. So, you are not going to a planet or to the moon but you are going to the next best thing to all of them.

NASA announced on Friday that for the first time it is allowing private citizens to fly, if not to the moon, at least to the International Space Station, the only place where our kind live off the planet. it was opening the International Space Station (ISS) to for-profit activities including marketing, advertising, off-Earth manufacturing – and even tourism.

“We’re enabling up to two commercial flights with private astronauts per year,” said NASA’s ISS Deputy Director, Robyn Gatens. “So, depending on how many seats they want to carry, that would be a dozen or so private astronauts potentially per year on the International Space Station.”

For the Nigerian listener, Gatens later added, “private astronauts from other countries can fly through a US entity”. That means ISS passenger-guests do not need to hold a US passport or hail from a space-faring nation. They do need to book their training, their ride and their up-to-30-day stay through an American space carrier.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is not pivoting to being a space travel agency, at least not today. Private companies have to shell out $35000 per night for each passenger to sleep in the station’s beds and use amenities, that is, air, water, the internet and the station’s toilet. Rocket flights to and from the station, for those concerned would be much more expensive for profit’s sake. For all its merit it is astonishing how an unextraordinary albeit beautiful hotel like The Royal Penthouse Suite at the Hotel President Wilson in Geneva, Switzerland is worth almost double the rates of this station at $68000 per night.

Friday’s announcement was one of several new policies designed to allow companies to take advantage of the space station as a place for business, something that NASA has often frowned on in the past.

“This is a huge different way for us to do business,” William H Gerstenmaier, NASA’s associate administrator for human exploration and operations, said during a news conference at Nasdaq in New York. The announcement could also help resolve questions about the space station’s future. The Trump administration last year created tumult when it proposed ending federal financing of the International Space Station by the end of 2024 and move to commercial alternatives.

On Friday, NASA officials said the goal was an eventual transition to orbital outposts fully run by private companies, but there was no set date.

“We’re hoping new capabilities will develop that can one day take over for the space station,” Gatens said, “We won’t transition off station until we have something else to go to so we don’t have a date certain.”

Among the agency’s other announcements on Friday: It will allow some ventures that are purely for profit, without requiring some educational or research component. That could include flying trinkets to space and then selling them on Earth.

Later this month, NASA will seek proposals for adding a module to the space station that is owned and operated by a private company, and it will select a plan by the end of the year.

What is not up for sale are corporate sponsorships for parts of the station. NASA astronauts still would not be allowed to endorse products, but might perform off-camera production on commercials from orbit for paying customers. While pricey, the revenues generated by space tourism for NASA would not come close to covering the costs of operating the space station, which are one of the agency’s greatest expenses.