Want to become a REAL Astronaut?

[Admin]

Now it is possible, but you'll have to save some $ make it happen (or pass NASA or ESA qualification).

What's a few bucks worth when you have a dream to fulfill!

http://www.spaceadventures.com/index.cfm

/Admin

[RMS Driver]

$100 million for a Lunar Flight? That's pocket change.

[marvx]

chose same option....worth of it in any way   i guess

[spaceboy7441]

Don't know if I would feel like I was a REAL astronaut. I would feel like i cheated by just paying my way rather than earning it.

[Admin]

Well, I wish you earn your gold Astro pin Spaceboy and remember all of us when on real orbit! I guess you'll have a good laugh remembering the Sync Launches! By then I hope we'll be well into the 10th release of the sim (assuming 2 years between versions) and an even bigger community.

/Admin

[Moonwalker]

Don't know if I would feel like I was a REAL astronaut. I would feel like i cheated by just paying my way rather than earning it.

Well, in the long term astronauts will be history anyway

At the biginning there was primitive tools, simply made of wood and stone. Then there was the wheel, boats made of wood, steam engines and trains, and today there are about 10.000 airplanes in the air around the world each second and most of them travel by about 0.8 Mach. Who would have ever thought about that only 100 years ago? And not to mention flights into earth orbit, to the Moon, and beyond, unmanned for now but it will happen manned as well sooner or later.

Meanwhile I think that space travel will become what aviation has become until today: available to almost everybody

[Admin]

Your'e right, but Spacewalker is talking about "during my useful lifetime"!

For many of us, including this Admin, the "run" will be too "long".

/Admin

[Moonwalker]

Your'e right, but Spacewalker is talking about "during my useful lifetime"!

For many of us, including this Admin, the "run" will be too "long".

/Admin

That's true sadly.

But I think even today it is not a shame to "buy" a space flight, if you have the money. If I'd had the money of Bill Gates or of persons who have less but still some hundred millions, be sure I would pay for it and feel great with it

[Admin]

True! It's like saying "I cheat if I buy a plane ticket instead of flying the plane myself" - LOL!

/Admin

[Moonwalker]

True! It's like saying "I cheat if I buy a plane ticket instead of flying the plane myself" - LOL!

/Admin

Hehe. And even if you want to fly it yourself, you'll have to pay to get the licence

Even if you do your training at Lufthansa here in Germany for example, you still have to pay. They deduct it from the salaries within the first years of your career.

[Admin]

True! It's like saying "I cheat if I buy a plane ticket instead of flying the plane myself" - LOL!

/Admin

Hehe. And even if you want to fly it yourself, you'll have to pay to get the licence

Even if you do your training at Lufthansa here in Germany for example, you still have to pay. They deduct it from the salaries within the first years of your career.

Like everywhere in the world, unless of course they hire you after several years in the Air Force with 2000 hrs of fixed-wing flying under your (black) belt.

/Admin

[Moonwalker]

Yes. The Air Force is a good but tough way to become an airline pilot. A friend of my parents did so. He now flies business jets for a British airline. And he is a friend of Thomas Reiter by the way. I got some nice photos of their career in the German Air Force when they still flew the Tornado. Nice personalities. But when I look how much stress they have to deal with and how much they have to work, I'm glad that space flight and aviation only is a hobby in my case