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At the present time in Myasishchev Design Bureau (MDB) the project of the aerospace system (AKS) M-91 is being developed to provide tourist flights of 16 (sixteen) passengers (2 pilots + 14 tourists) at the altitude above 100 km.
The purpose of the developed project AKS M-91 is similar to that of SpaceShipTwo (SS2) project of Virgin Galactic company the owner of which is Sir Richard Branson. The company uses the experience of Burt Rutan’s commercial company Scaled Composites. The main purpose of that project is suborbital tourist flights, that is transportation of 8 passengers (2 pilots +6 tourists) to the altitude above 100 km. AKS M-91 project is remarkable for its wide potentialities because the used carrier practically has the unlimited load-carrying capacity (> 50 t) that allows to provide multi choice of payloads. At the first stage a space module is being developed that enables to provide a suborbital flight for 16 passengers with further increase of passengers number and the decrease of a ticket cost for this trip correspondingly. At the next stage it is expected to provide step-by-step increase of the suborbital flight altitude up to 150 km and the duration of tourists staying in weightlessness conditions. It is worth mentioning that in projects developed all over the world (including Virgin Galactic) little attention is devoted to the problems of flight safety that in essence are determinant for attracting future tourists. The crew and space tourists safety in AKS M-91 is achieved by using full-pressure suits developed in RF and by choosing optimum decent and landing regimes. The adopted technology designs are based on the experience gained by MDB and NPO “Molniya” in developing piloted aerospace systems starting from “Buran” orbiter. Flights are supposed to be carried out from territories of equatorial countries in South-East Asia and Arabian East. The owner of the project is a private Russian company the name of which is not disclosed yet. |