Three people who never could have afforded the trip for themselves were given the opportunity thanks to the charter of the last orbital tourist flight. Each of the space travelers is paying his own way.
They are the customers.
The firm in Dayton, Ohio that owns and operates luxury apartments is called theConnor Group.
Mark Pathy is the chief executive of Mavrik Corporation.
Eytan is a former Israeli Air Force pilot.
They did not know each other before.
While earlier private travelers to the space station were accompanied by professional Russian astronauts, the Axiom-1 mission is very different in that the entire crew are not affiliated with any government.
The commander of the space station trip will be a former NASA astronauts, Michael L.pez-Alegr. Mr. Lopez-Alegr served as space station commander from September 2006 to April 2007, after flying on three space shuttle missions.
When I left NASA 10 years ago, I became a very strong advocate for and believer in commercial spaceflight.
Mr.Connor's previous exploits include a journey in a deep-sea submersible to the deepest parts of the Pacific Ocean, more than 35,000 feet below the surface in the Mariana Trench, and climbing Mount Kilimanjaro.
Mr.Connor objected to being called a space tourist.
The space tourists will spend up to 15 hours training in space. Depending on our role, we have spent anywhere from 750 to over 1,000 hours training.
Mr.Connor said that he and his crewmates would be conducting scientific experiments.
Mr. Pathy serves on the boards of several charities and is the chairman of the board for the Stingray Group, a media and entertainment company based in Montreal.
A friend of Mr. Pathy told him about the private spaceflight missions.
Vital Capital is a private equity fund that aims to improve housing, water, electricity and health care in developing countries while earning money for investors. He knew Ilan Ramon, an Israeli Air Force pilot who died when the space shuttle Columbia broke apart after returning to Earth.
He was a good friend of mine. I was able to visit him during his training.
Mr. Ramon started an experiment with the observation of storms. The diary that Mr. Ramon kept while in Columbia will be taken by him.
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