Tourists could follow in the footsteps of Neil Armstrong and become the first people to visit the moon in more than 40 years – provided they can afford £100 million to fund the mission.
Crew members, numbering up to three per shuttle, would spend a year in training before launching the shuttle from a base in Kazakhstan and docking with a space station
The interior of a space craft owned by Excalibur Almaz
Excalibur Almaz, a British space company based on the Isle of Man, has announced plans to make the first trip to the moon since the Apollo 17 mission of 1972.
The company has acquired a fleet of former Soviet shuttles and space stations and is planning the mission in three years time.
The flight, which would last four months and fly past the moon at a distance of 1000km, is open to anyone who can finance it including government-sponsored researchers, space agency scientists or even billionaires with money to burn.
But any space enthusiast wishing to make the trip would have to be willing to fly the craft themself because no trained astronauts would accompany them on their odyssey, the company said.
Art Dula, who founded the company in 2005, announced a plan to carry out the first test flight in 2014 and the first civilian voyage a year later in a speech at the Royal Aeronautical Society in London yesterday.
"We want to have the same kind of tradition that Britain had in the 16th and 17th centuries when its explorers went to the ends of the earth seeking knowledge and information and bringing back wealth.
"I don't know how much wealth they will bring back, but the first person to fly it will earn a place in the history books."
Crew members, numbering up to three per shuttle, would spend a year in training before launching the shuttle from a base in Kazakhstan and docking with a space station, which would then use thrusters to ferry passengers through space.
The slow speed of the thrusters, compared with more expensive rockets, would mean a mission to the moon and back would take four months to complete, with the craft spiralling through space "like an etch-a-sketch", Mr Dula explained.
He said: "The engines are very low-thrust, they are very dependable but they run on electricity. This kind of technology has been used before but never for a big habitation module like ours.
"We are probably not going to have a professional astronaut because frankly, this type of space flight is so different to anything that has been before that there is no advantage in having someone what has a steely eye and can make a decision in half a second. With the kind of equipment we have you could make a decision overnight and sleep on it."
From the space station the crew would be able to carry out any scientific experiments they wished, using equipment ferried with them on the shuttle, and later missions could potentially even orbit the moon, he added.
Excalibur Almaz acquired its fleet from NPO Mashinostroyenia, the Russian company which designed the Almaz space programme, and refitted the six craft with "off the shelf" modern systems.
On its website the company says: "Each EA space station boasts 90 cubic metres of pressurised volume, which is plenty for a crew to survive in relative comfort for months at a time. The fleet is at a very high level of space readiness and, crucially, has a proven emergency-escape system."
Mr Dula admitted his plan sounded "somewhat unbelievable" but insisted he would have no shortage of takers.
He said: "A sovereign government could certainly afford it, it is not anywhere near what an Apollo mission would cost because we have well over £1 billion of costs that the Soviets have sunk into it. But this have to be a government body.
"There have always been very wealthy individuals who have sponsored scientific missions ... we simply do not know who is going to do it, who since childhood has desperately wanted to go into space, but I expect we will have a lot of interested people."
Dr Dave Parker of the UK Space Agency said the move was part of a "whole new world" of private space travel but added that he was "pretty sceptical" that a civilian could be trained to fly a spacecraft in the space of a year.
He said: "What they are doing is trying to put together some pieces of existing technology from Russia with a few bits of new technology so that they can re-use it and they have been trying to develop this idea for a good few years now.
"Obviously the reality is they do not have the investment to do any of this at the moment. But good luck to them, people have got to try things like this."
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