Following the release of the animated presentation of the Altairis Rocket and agreements with the United States Air Force, Florida Space Authority and Cape Canaveral, AERA Corp. announced Thursday a target date has been chosen for the first flight of a civilian crew into space and that it has begun ticket sales for future flights.
Altairis will lift off from Cape Canaveral beginning in December 2006. Tickets go on sale this morning.
“With our design completed and our agreements in place to use Cape Canaveral for launch, flight logistics and landing, we are now ready to begin ticket sales,” said Bill Sprague, founder, president and chief scientist behind the Altairis Rocket.
Altairis is designed to comfortably launch six passenger astronauts and one mission commander into space and bring them safely back to earth.
The tickets for the first commercially available flights cost $250,000 and can be acquired by going to the AeraSpaceTours.com Web site and applying via the Web.
Those who apply will receive a call from a personal service representative to continue the process of garnering a seat on the first flight.
“There are certain minimum physical requirements and we have to be sure that the people who have signed up meet the criteria to be an Altairis passenger astronaut,” Said Sprague.
All seats on flights in 2007 may be reserved also by visiting the Web site and placing a deposit of 25 percent of the purchase price with the company. It is expected that there will be an additional 30 launches in 2007.
“We believe that the flights subsequent to 2007 and beyond will be less expensive than the first flights,” Said Sprague. “We are looking forward to our first launch in 2006 and beginning a new era of space travel.”
