Landing! All private passengers returned from the space station by SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, which cost 360 million yuan per person.

The first private round-trip mission of the United States to the International Space Station Ax- 1 was successfully completed, and the manned dragon spacecraft Endeavour with four private astronauts successfully splashed down the waters near Florida. This success has also made Axiom Space Commercial Space Company, the operator of this mission, the focus. Of the four people on board, one retired astronaut from NASA is an employee of Axiom Space, and the other three are monopolists. To put it bluntly, except for a few icing on the cake experimental tasks, all three of them traveled to the space station.

However, this space trip was not smooth sailing. The Dragon Spacecraft was launched on April 8, and docked with the International Space Station a day later. Originally planned to leave the space station on April 19 and land on April 20, but due to the bad weather in the landing area, the return time was repeatedly postponed, and the "tour group" was forced to stay in space for several days, and finally left the International Space Station on April 24, where it has been * *. It took 16 hours from separation to landing on the sea.

In the days when the return date is repeatedly postponed, tourists are not lonely, but they may be playing drums in their hearts. Because they are not professional astronauts after all. Among the three rich tourists, the oldest is American real estate tycoon Larry Connor, 7 1 year old. The other two rich people are from Canada and Israel, both of whom are not young, one is 53 years old and the other is 64 years old.

Although two of the three people have flying experience, the Israeli one used to be a fighter pilot, but we should see that the main reason why they can go into space is money!

So how much does it cost to go to the space station? It was previously reported that the round-trip air ticket per person was 55 million US dollars, equivalent to about 350-360 million yuan. Willing to spend so much money to travel in space, I have to say that these people not only have money, but also have a heart. Is it worth spending the money to travel in space? It is said that the cost includes the following items:

Space Exploration Technology Company's launch fee, space mission training fee and insurance fee, and NASA's related expenses for visiting the International Space Station, such as $4.8 million per mission management fee, are used for mission planning and execution, space communication fee, etc. The official astronaut's time occupation fee is $5.2 million/person, which is used for the time cost required by the official astronaut to accompany the space tourists. Finally, the living expenses of the International Space Station are $88,000 to164,000 per person per day.

I don't know if Axiom's contract with tourists is the same price, because the return time is several days later than originally planned, and the cost is bound to rise. However, I believe that a few rich people should not care about spending more money. As long as they can make it to heaven and come back safely. In fact, these people are not the first tourists to travel in space. Before that, 1 1 tourists visited the International Space Station.

The first one was dennis tito, an American, who went into space on Soyuz spacecraft at a cost of 20 million dollars. Charles Simonyi, with dual citizenship of the United States and Hungary, entered the International Space Station twice in 2007 and 2009, and is the only space tourist who has entered the International Space Station twice so far.

In addition to these tourists visiting the International Space Station, Space Exploration Technology also carried out the "Enlightenment 4" mission, which is also a space flight for all civilians. However, although these four tourists reached the orbit around the earth, they did not enter the International Space Station. In addition, Blue Origin also made suborbital flights with civilians.

Axiom Space also plans to build a cabin on the International Space Station, with a large observation deck dedicated to sightseeing. In the future, this module can operate independently of the International Space Station. If successful, private tourists visiting the space station may be more popular.

Compared with the frequent appearance of "private astronauts" abroad, China's astronauts in the sky so far have been selected from air force pilots, including the Shenzhou 13 crew that returned not long ago, and their qualities are excellent in all aspects. This phenomenon has also caused a lot of discussion among netizens. Based on this, some people think that since such an old person can easily go to heaven, is it unnecessary for China to be so strict in selecting and training astronauts?

There are many people who hold this view online, but this view is quite one-sided. Different tasks have different requirements for astronauts. Before and during the construction of Tiangong Space Station, China's manned space missions were mostly exploration, development and verification, and the tasks were complex and arduous. Astronauts need to have the ability to directly control and drive spacecraft, and often go out for activities, so they have high requirements for quality and ability, and the training time is also very long.

Take China's first astronaut, Yang Liwei, as an example. After Shenzhou 5 launched, he experienced a very painful and strange vibration for 26 seconds. Yang Liwei once recalled in "A Day in Space": "The feeling of pain is getting stronger and stronger, and my internal organs seem to be broken. I can hardly stand it and feel that I am dying. "

Later, researchers found the culprit of vibration: the vibration frequency of the fuel tube in the oxidant of the Long March II F rocket was close to that of the rocket structure, so POGO vibration was generated. Although this problem was solved in the follow-up mission, it is still unknown whether Yang Liwei can persist if he is replaced by a civilian astronaut who has only experienced short-term training.

Of course, Yang Liwei is the first pioneer, and the risk is relatively high. Today, China's manned space technology is much more mature than ten years ago, but the task of astronauts is still complex and arduous:

The newly returned Shenzhou/KOOC-0/3 crew has been in orbit for/KOOC-0/83 days, completed the first radial rendezvous and docking, and made two spacewalks out of the cabin. For the first time, it used a mechanical arm to operate a large-scale on-orbit aircraft for transposition test, and for the first time, it conducted a manual teleoperation test (Tianzhou II) in orbit, and completed a number of space science experiments.

Compared with Shenzhou 13, the task of Shenzhou 14 is more arduous, because during its orbit, Shenzhou 14 will realize the docking of the experimental module and the core module, and complete the construction of the main part of China's space station in one fell swoop. Some people describe the mission of Shenzhou 14 crew as: 9 times combination, 5 times docking, 3 times separation and 2 times transposition.

Why are there 9 combinations? Because during this period, not only Tianzhou and Meng Tian will be launched, but also Tianzhou No.4 and No.5 will be launched, plus Tianzhou No.3, which has been docked with the space station, and Shenzhou No.15, which will realize the astronauts' "orbit change", so there will be many spacecraft combined with the space station, and sometimes the interfaces will be changed, and various configurations will change like a lantern.

Specifically, Tianzhou-3 docked forward, Tianzhou-4 docked backward, and Shenzhou-13 docked radially. This is the first configuration, and Tianzhou-3 separated to form the second configuration. The next step will be the highlight of space station construction: docking and transposition of space stations.

Because these two experimental modules both reach 20 tons, which are quite huge, they need to be axially (positively) docked with the core module, then transferred to both sides for transposition docking, and finally the Tianhe, Questionnaire and Meng Tian modules will be separated. In this process, the space station will experience four configurations.

After that, the separation of Tianzhou No.4, the docking of Tianzhou No.5 and the forward docking of Shenzhou 15 will form three configurations, which add up to no more or less, just nine configurations, five rendezvous and docking, three separation and two transposition docking.

In these dazzling docking transformations, astronauts also need to complete the transformation of the main airlock, that is, to activate the "personnel-only airlock" on the Explorer experimental module, and the original airlock in the core module will become the "standby airlock". Another big project is the "cascade combination" test of the small manipulator with 7 degrees of freedom and the original large manipulator, which will be combined into an ultra-long manipulator with a length of 15 meters to realize the crawling function of the cabin.

In addition to the above tasks, the Shenzhou 14 crew will also complete the unlocking and installation of multiple scientific research cabinets in two experimental cabins, as well as many outbound operations.

After talking so much, I guess everyone is dizzy, right? We can't make any mistakes in so much work, so we can imagine how hard our astronauts are. In contrast, the "private astronaut" on the Ax- 1 mission is simply too relaxed to see the scenery in space and experience life in space. It is almost impossible for them to complete such a complicated task as Shenzhou 14 crew.

However, when China's space station is built, it starts to run stably and carry out various experiments, not only the role of space pilots and engineers, but also some technical experts are needed. The physical quality of these experts is not as high as that of space pilots, and the training time is not that long.

As for when we can travel on the space station, it is not without hope. Yang Liwei, deputy chief designer of China's manned spaceflight project, said not long ago:

It can be seen that in the future, everyone may travel to the space station in China to enjoy the magnificent scenery of space and the earth, and this dream may come true in the near future.