[cstross]

Ahem: a Russian Orlan-M spacesuit, about the best available off the shelf today, weighs 112-120Kg (or up to 250 of your quaint imperial "pounds"). Then you need to include air, water, and food. The structural mass of the seat the astronaut sits in isn't insignificant, either. A Mercury capsule -- a can sized to hold one guy in a space suit -- weighs around 1100Kg at splash-down, minus retro-rockets, parachutes, escape tower, and most of the heat shield; the corresponding weight for a Soviet Vostok spacecraft was around 2400Kg, with the cosmonaut sitting in an ejector capsule weighing around 340Kg (they ejected before touchdown because it had no soft-landing system).

All told, I reckon 1000Kg of spacecraft deadweight plus 200-250Kg of supplies per astronaut is as low as you're going to get. So once you add your notional 85Kg astronaut, you're talking about 1500Kg at US $2300/Kg, or around US $4M per person for a ride into orbit. If you're really slick you might be able to shave that by 50%. 90%? I don't think so.

Done right, this will cut the cost of space tourism by nearly an order of magnitude and will open up the possibility of the private sector actually being able to send folks to do stuff in orbit -- like fix or upgrade comsats. But it's not a magic wand and it's not going to reduce the cost per person to orbit to the rough order of a year's salary for an engineer.

[benl]

Of course, I fully agree. Please don't read any implication about space tourism into a simple FYI calculation. But a 6x cost reduction is a big deal, and this figure illustrates that very well. See the follow up comment I'd already posted here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2412096