SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
A milestone for space tourism this week - civilians took a spacewalk. NPR's Geoff Brumfiel joins us. Geoff, thanks so much for being with us.
GEOFF BRUMFIEL, BYLINE: It's nice to be with you, Scott.
SIMON: Was this a walk and not a repair mission?
BRUMFIEL: That's right. This was the first sort of private spacewalk just for fun. It was by a billionaire entrepreneur named Jared Isaacman, and he went up aboard a rocket from Elon Musk's company, SpaceX. SpaceX also made the spacesuits, which had a new design that had never flown in space before. And Isaacman was testing them out. I guess it wasn't totally for fun.
Basically, the way it worked was they hooked these suits up to the white sort of umbilical cords that connected them to the spacecraft's life support systems. They pumped all the air out of the capsule and opened the hatch. And he was greeted by this fantastic view of Australia and New Zealand. He spent about 10 minutes outside and then came back in. And then he was followed by SpaceX engineer, Sarah Gillis, who did basically the same thing.
SIMON: The long tube - the umbilical - hooked up into the spacesuit sounds like a lot what they used to do in the 1960s.
BRUMFIEL: Yeah, that's exactly right. You know, SpaceX tried to play up that this was a new system, and it had some fancy stuff in there. There was a heads-up display on the helmet and stuff. But the truth is, this is very much the way the Gemini spacewalks went. That's because it's very hard to build spacesuits with self-contained life support systems. I think SpaceX saw this as the first step. They want to go on to build suits that can someday be used by astronauts going to Mars, and I think they had to walk before they could run, if you'll pardon the spacewalking pun there.
SIMON: Well, what's the significance of civilians, too?
BRUMFIEL: Well, up until now, this has been only done by professional astronauts, and they don't do spacewalks for fun. They do them very much for work and out of necessity - for example, to maintain the International Space Station. Isaacman had gone up in a space capsule once before, but he's not NASA trained. And, actually, none of his crew were trained by NASA either. There were two SpaceX engineers and a former Air Force pilot who works for Isaacman in the private sector, but they hadn't even been to space.
And so this is significant because spacewalking is challenging. It's dangerous. And it wasn't entirely obvious that a private crew could do it, and now they've shown they can and get this amazing view.
SIMON: How much did that view cost?
BRUMFIEL: A lot - a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot. We don't know exactly how much 'cause Isaacman won't say how much he's paid, and neither will SpaceX. But, I mean, space tourism is super expensive. So, for example, a company called Axiom will fly you to the international space station for 10 days at a cost of around $60 million. There are some cheaper options. You know, if you're on a space tourism shoestring, you can fly to the edge of space, get a good view, a minute or two of weightlessness, and that'll run you anywhere from a little over half a million to a little over a million dollars. So even the cheap options cost more than most people's houses.
SIMON: So why all this talk that space tourism is coming into its own?
BRUMFIEL: Well, I mean, there are more ways to do space tourism than ever before, and Isaacman shows there's more stuff you can do in space than ever before. But, you know, I think it really is an open question whether it can be profitable. Most of these companies are privately held, but one called Virgin Galactic is public. And last year, it lost half a billion - with a B - dollars.
Now, part of that is the ticket price and the fact that going to space is obviously expensive. But another issue is that most people are only going to do this once, as opposed to planes, for example, which we take all the time. So I think there has been a lot of talk about space tourism. I think this is a big step for space tourism. In the meantime, people like Isaacman are having a good time.
SIMON: Well, thanks. And it's good to talk to you, Geoff Brumfiel. Thanks so much.
BRUMFIEL: Thanks, Scott.
(SOUNDBITE OF OLAFUR ARNALDS' "LOOM") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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