Digest Number 378

> Hello
>

Hello,

> I do not know the answer. I believe (my opinion) the current tourists are
not
> paying the true cost of their flights, but they are being tolerated for
> publicity value. If this is not true, I apologise now.

Well, I really don't know in what ciphers are you basing your assumption
that "the current tourists are not paying the true cost of their flights".
There is a rule of thumb saying that the current cost for lifting a pound to
LEO is $ 10,000 . So, a guy weighting 200 lb costs $2 million. Even if life
support systems and related stuff quintuples his/her weight, then the cost
will still be $10 million. Since Tito and Shuttleworth apparently paid
something around $20 million (and they *have* enough money to pay that
without straining their budgets), then the Russians are in fact having a
100% profit.

However, it has been mentioned that the launch costs using Russian tech are
indeed well below the rule-of-thumb threshold of $10,000/lb, so the profit
that the Russians are really gaining may be much higher.

Lucio Coelho