The combination of price, timing, and experience was not optimal at the time of offering the mission to potential customers, and the contract with SpaceX expired.
Space Adventures has abandoned plans to organize orbital flights on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft with space tourists on board. This was reported by the specialized portal Space News with reference to the statement of the company’s representative Stacey Tearne.
“The mission was offered to a large number of our potential customers, but the combination of price, timing, and experience was not optimal at that time, and our contract with SpaceX expired. We hope to return to this proposal in the future,” she told the portal.
In February 2020, SpaceX signed an agreement with Space Adventures to deliver space tourists into orbit on its new Crew Dragon spacecraft. According to him, up to four tourists could make flights lasting up to five days. During the flight, the docking of the spacecraft with the ISS was not planned. It was expected that the first group of tourists would go into space in early 2021.
Space Adventures has already organized flights of tourists to orbit. From 2001 to 2009, eight short-term flights were performed under contracts with the company for the Russian segment of the ISS. Americans Dennis Tito (2001), Greg Olsen (2006), Anousheh Ansari (2006), Richard Garriott (2008) and Charles Simonyi (2007 and 2009), Briton Mark Shuttleworth (2002), and Canadian Guy Laliberte (2009) visited the station.
