(Ecns.cn)--Traveling to outer space will no longer be a privilege reserved for astronauts. Chinese people, particularly billionaires, will soon have a chance to go sightseeing on the moon.
Eric Anderson, CEO of Space Adventures, a private spaceflight marketing firm in the United States, recently came to China to sell the company's second ticket to the moon, according to the China Business Radio on Tuesday.
The ticket is the first of its kind sold to Chinese people and the price will be set at about $150 million. Space Adventures signed a contract with a Hong Kong-based space traveling company as its sole agent to sell the ticket.
"The ticket will be purposely sold to a Chinese billionaire who can pay for this amount of money in a breeze," said the CEO of this HK company. "We welcome Chinese billionaires, and once they buy the ticket, he or she will go for a lunar visit with the first ticket buyer and a Russian astronaut," added the CEO.
The trip is expected to fly its three passengers to the moon in 2015 by a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, and according to some US reports, the first ticket buyer might be the famous US movie director, James Cameron.
The two space travelers, according to the plan, will stay at the International Space Station for seven days, and finish a circumlunar mission around the moon for eight days. In order to assure their safety, the spacecraft will not land on the moon and will land directly back on earth after the trip.
Some Chinese people do not think positively of this ticket, for they think that most Chinese people, ordinary or rich, lack an adventurous spirit and may not be willing to run the risk.
Though China has been developing at a fast speed and the number of billionaires has increased, seldom do people like to show their wealth in front of others, said Yuan Yuan, chief editor of the Entrepreneurial Weekly.
Founded in 1998, Space Adventures offers a variety of programs such as orbital spaceflight missions to the International Space Station, circumlunar missions around the moon, zero gravity flights, cosmonaut training programs, spaceflight qualification programs, and reservations on future suborbital spacecrafts.
