"Mr. Isaacman has declined to say how much he is paying for this orbital trip, only that it was less than the $200 million he hopes to raise for St. Jude Children’s Hospital with an accompanying fund-raising drive."

Is this some way to write the trip cost off as charitable deduction? Spend $50m sending self to space as 'advertising' and if you dont raise more via fund raiser its oh well we tried?

Edit: Thought it fair to add, this may well be a genuine attempt to raise money for a good cause with good intent. I'm a bit jaded from seeing people around offices spend money on expensive holidays and tying it to a cause where they raise fractions of what is spent on the holiday. My feeling is if they cared for the cause they'd skip 'hiking across country X' or whatever and donate the money while having a cheaper holiday elsewhere. So my bias is towards being a bit sceptical when it come to people trying to raise money for charity via expensive personal experiences.

This happens all the time. Throw a big charity fundraiser to raise your social profile and get a tax write off for it. Let someone else pay for the actual charity.

At least they're in orbit, not just a suborbital fight.

Bezos spent 10 minutes in space. Why bother? Al Shepard did that in 1961. NASA did a second launch with Gus Grissom. Those were just tests before they tried orbiting. After that, nobody bothered again until 2004.

Only in America things like this can happen.

A whole industry bootstrapping itself to make semi-conductors doubling every 18 months, going from exotic, mission critical hardware to commodity; SpaceX is doing the same thing with flight hardware. Contrast that with previous generation engines (the RS-25 comes to mind) with a sticker price of 125 millions... per engine! [0] Meanwhile we're looking at ~60 millions per seat on this flight. Incredible.

https://spacenews.com/aerojet-rocketdyne-defends-sls-engine-...

You used to be able to visit a space station for $20M. This price outstrips the inflation rate since 2001.

Do you have a source on this?

Reputedly, that's what the very first space tourist Dennis Tito paid for his jaunt to the ISS.

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/space-tourism-20-year-ann...

The math is a bit different though, since that sum was propping up Roscosmos, which is a government org with opaque accounting and already had everything in place. By contrast, at whatever price Isaacman paid, SpaceX made a clear commercial profit.

Tito flew on Richard Garriott aka Lord British (Ultima series) ticket. Afair the original ticket was $5 mil, but dotcom boom forced Richard into liquidating assets. Space Adventures charged Tito extra.

Well, we're all here for a moment in the history books. This is crazy. Space travel is now affordable for the rich, not just the hyper-wealthy.

Don't fret, the poor will be herded up into space to mine the asteroids eventually.

We can’t even herd them to pick crops any more, I doubt we won’t have robotics ready by then.

For our robot overlords (did I say overlords? I meant protectors.)

I don't think they will be robots. Maybe cyborgs.

What a time to be alive!

That said, I’d like to live in your world where having an expendable $55 million per seat is merely rich.

The trip was paid for by one person, so it's a $220 million personal expense. For a 3-day trip, this has to be the biggest expense per unit of whatever by anyone, ever.

The ISS orbits 16 times per day. In 3 days roughly 50 orbits.

$220M / (40000*50) = $110/Km. Still expensive, but at least we now have a number (a trip from NYC to Paris, first class cabin, is roughly $1/Km)

Source on the price?

There isn't one because it isn't public. Maybe there are some numbers for how much SpaceX charges NASA but almost all missions involving the military or NASA cost more than civilian launches due to extra requirements. Especially so when they are not just ordered on an ad-hoc basis but instead are part of large contracts that include development funding.

A Falcon 9 launch can cost under $30 million, I'd be shocked if Mr. Isaacman paid more than $100 million, all told.

I'd be shocked if SpaceX didn't treat this launch with all the care and preparation and expense of a manned NASA launch. Any issue with this launch would ground F9/Dragon and require full investigation the same as an issue with a NASA launch.

No. Falcon 9 never costs less then $50-60 million for costumers. $30 million is maybe internal cost for SpaceX (likely SpaceX is lower by now).

The Dragon however is more expensive then the rocket itself.

I would be shocked if it was less then $150M.

Space Adventures is selling seats on their planned SpaceX mission next year for a cool $60M a pop.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Adventures_Crew_Dragon_m...

On a for-profit mission. Who knows how much of that is going into their coffers?

True, but even low margins on $60 Million could be millions.

If nothing else, at least St. Judes will make $200 million. They're a good charity.

Since we're talking about stupidly rich people, Bezos makes more than that every day.