Private Company to Launch Ships, Leaves Off Orbital Death Cannons

Despite appearances to the contrary, this is not a butt plug. It is an original Almaz awaiting renovation. Image Credit: Excalibur Almaz.

A new company, Excalibur Almaz, is planning to fly commercial passengers into space starting in 2013. The company plans to fly right to low earth orbit, putting the company way ahead of other services starting around the same time that will only carry passengers on sub-orbital flights.

This is good news for fans of private space exploration, but the really, really, REALLY good news for space fanatics involves the ships the company plans to use. The same craft originally formed the backbone of the Soviet Union’s secret orbiting death machine program. Seriously.

Excalibur Almaz has acquired several Reusable Return Vehicles that were initially designed to service the secret Almaz space stations in the 1970s.

These were military stations, and some reports state that at least one of them was armed with a high speed 23mm aviation cannon. Cosmonauts would aim the gun by rotating the entire station.

The cannon was apparently even fired once. Since the gun wasn’t aimed at anything in particular, the chances are the shell is still going. The shell isn’t experiencing atmospheric drag or friction (it’s in space, stupid) so presumably it won’t stop until it eventually hits something.

See? Big difference.

In other words, the former Soviet Union may have inadvertently fired the opening salvo in an interstellar war. Don’t be surprised if some very angry aliens show up in a few thousand years demanding to know why we’re shooting at them.

Excalibur Almaz won’t be arming its ships. This is a major disappointment to those people who are only interested in space exploration if something shoots lasers and then blows up. The vehicles will actually be used to further private space exploration efforts.

“With this announcement, the dream of private orbital space exploration may become a reality in the very near future,” said veteran Russian cosmonaut Vladimir Titov. Titov is one of several space veterans working as an advisor to Excalibur Almaz. Others include NASA’s Leroy Chiao and Franklin Chang-Diaz.

The ships themselves are pretty cool, despite looking perilously similar to enormous flying butt plugs. The vehicles carry three people or about 500 kilograms of cargo. They’re designed to stay in space for at least a week, and are reusable.

Paying your way into orbit currently costs about $30 million. Excalibur Almaz has not announced how much flights will cost once the service starts. The company has detailed plans to update the ships with modern technology.

The updates will likely help in lining up customers. Very few people want to fly around the hideously deadly environment of outer space in a vehicle that was almost old enough to vote around the time New Frontier News started high school.

Excalibur Almaz plans for its spacecraft to be compatible with a number of different launch vehicles. This will give the company the capability to launch from sites around the world. The ships consist of two parts; the reusable vehicle and an expendable service module.