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Saturday, January 30th, 2021

Meet the people paying $55 million each to fly to the space station

Author:     Christian Davenport
Source:     The Washington Post
Publication Date:     Jan. 26, 2021 at 5:30 a.m. PST Add
 Link: Meet the people paying $55 million each to fly to the space station
Stephan:   You were laid off from your job, and have been out of work for 8 months. You're worried about losing the home you and your wife bought three years ago, and your daughter’s ninth birthday is coming up and she wants a bicycle, and you are trying to figure out where the money to buy it is going to come from. You are in other words a typical American family, one of millions of families in similar circumstances. Meanwhile, the uber-rich are living in another world. What do I mean by that? Read this. This is what wealth inequality looks like, and it pervades American society.
From left, Axiom crew members Eytan Stibbe, Michael Lopez-Alegria, Mark Pathy and Larry Connor. Credit: Axiom Space

Two are grandfathers, the other has three young children. All three are extremely wealthy, with the means to pay the $55 million ticket price for an eight-day stay on the International Space Station. They are the first would-be spaceflight crew comprised entirely of private citizens in a mission to the station.

Sometime early next year, if all goes according to plan, the trio — Larry Connor, the managing partner of the Connor Group, a real estate investment firm based in Ohio; Mark Pathy, the chief executive of Mavrik Corp., a Canadian investment firm; and Eytan Stibbe, a businessman and former Israeli Air Force fighter pilot — will lift off from the Kennedy Space Center aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft for what is scheduled to be an eight-day stay on the International Space Station.

Accompanying them will be Michael López-Alegría, a former NASA astronaut who flew to space four times and is now a vice president of Axiom […]

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1 Comment

  1. Will on Saturday, January 30, 2021 at 11:00 am

    There must be a better use for $220 millions than a useless trip into space for these guys. But maybe they will do some important science…joking of course!