Boeing will transport passengers to space

The world's largest aircraft maker will make flights out of the world between now and 2015.

The illustration of Boeing's CST-100 spacecraft is about to connect to a future space station on Earth's low orbit. (Photo: Wired).

Wired said yesterday that Boeing had just signed a memorandum of understanding with Space Adventures about building and marketing passenger planes on low Earth orbit. Space Adventures is a company that organizes space tours. The company has partnered with the Russian Federal Space Agency to make many flights to the International Space Station (ISS) for individuals.

The two companies have not announced the price for a flight to orbit as well as the time of the first flights, but revealed that visitors will have the opportunity to visit the ISS or other space stations (to be assembled in future). Boeing is partnering with Bigelow Aerospace space technology company to build a space station in the near future.

Crew Space Transportation-100 (CST-100), the type of airship that 7 men have announced in July, will take passengers to orbit . The object that the company aims to is rich people, companies, organizations and public agencies. The CST-100 plan will begin to take off between now and 2015.

Boeing is the first aircraft manufacturer in the world to claim to bring people into space. Its deal with Space Adventures could turn the company into a competitor with the Russian Federal Space Agency, which in turn will reduce the cost of future space tours.

SpaceX, a US space transport company, has also announced a plan to bring passengers to low earth orbit. SpaceX will focus on transporting goods to ISS in the near future, but it has successfully built a spacecraft called Dragon.

Late last year Virgin Galactic, a British company, also confirmed it would take people to space by bullet-shaped spacecraft called VSS Enterprise (also known as SpaceShipTwo). Several hundred people have booked flights. Virgin Galactic said during the flight visitors will experience weightlessness for several minutes and watch the earth from a height of more than 100 km.