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Russia’s Oligarchs Eager to Join the Space League
Russia’s Federal Space Agency, Roskosmos, is going through a few applications of wealthy Russians willing to become space tourists, said Alexey Krasnov, head of the manned flight program department at Federal Space Agency, Roskosmos, RSN reported.
The first Russian may go off on the space journey as the self-funded tourist already in the fall of next year, Krasnov said, pointing out that the exact name will be known no sooner than financial terms of the flight are approved.
Krasnov appeared never doubting Roskosmos ability to agree with Space Adventures on the issue. The latter has already booked two flights for foreign space tourists at Soyuz spaceships to be launched in the fall of 2008 and 2009.
Not long ago, Space Adventures CEO Eric Anderson announced that his company had a few potential candidates for self-funded space tourism, but there were no Russians on his list.
Space journeys could be hardly viewed cheap entertainment. You will have to pay about $20 million today to blast off to the International Space Station, and an optional spacewalk of 90 minutes will cost another $15 million.
Dennis Tito of the United States pioneered the way for space tourism in 2001. Mark Shuttleworth of South Africa followed Tito in a year to become the second self-funded space tourist and U.S. Greg Olsen joined the league in 2005. The first female space tourist, U.S. Anousheh Ansari of Iran's origine, visited ISS in September 2006. Former Microsoft genius Charles Simoni became the world’s fifth and yet the last tourist to fly into space. Simoni paid roughly $25 million for the ISS trip.
www.kommersant.com
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