NEW YORK — People first landed on the Moon while I was a teenager. Decades later, space travel was still reserved for a small corps of astronauts and cosmonauts, and wealthy space tourists — six so far. The space business was the preserve of a few governments, plus large cost-plus contractors who lived in symbiosis with their government customers.
Space Adventures, a private company, arranges space tourist trips with Roskosmos, the Russian Federal Space Agency, for upwards of $35 million a flight. I invested in Space Adventures and in XCOR Aerospace, a rocket maker.
I could see the glimmer of the energy that results when commercial startups invade a market dominated by large, established organizations. I wanted to know more about space travel and figured that six months of space training with Roskosmos, organized by Space Adventures, was the best way to get totally immersed.