By Xinhua,
Beijing : Google co-founder Sergey Brin has put down a 5 million U.S. dollar deposit to book a flight into space with the space tourism company Space Adventures.
The company announced Wednesday that Brin will be the founding member of its Orbital Mission Explorers Circle, a group of six individuals who will each make a 5 million dollar down payment to book a seat on a future orbital space flight.
“We believe 99 percent of people want to experience space,” Eric Anderson, the head of the Virginia-based company, told a press conference in New York.
“Our goal is to have at least one mission to the ISS per year. There are more and more young billionaires who can afford the cost of a spaceflight.”
Google and its co-founder Brin have long supported space exploration. The company has sponsored the Google Lunar X Prize, a 25 million dollar competition to land an unmanned craft on the moon.
“I am a big believer in the exploration and commercial development of the space frontier and am looking forward to the possibility of going into space,” Brin said in a statement.
Space Adventures’ new club was formed to help kick-start a new effort by the company to fund its own rockets and missions to the International Space Station.
The inaugural flight with its own Russian-built Soyuz rocket is scheduled for 2011, Anderson said.
Space Adventures will host the first private space flight to the ISS in 2011, spokeswoman Stacey Tearne said.
Two seats will be available on that trip. The mission is part of a deal with the Russian Federal Space Agency (FSA).
Space Adventures launched the world’s first privately funded space mission in 2001.