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Oil No more room for tourists to Space Station
November 27, 2009 Edition 1
STAR CITY, Russia: There is no space for tourists wishing to fly to the International Space Station, a top Russian space official said yesterday.
Since the space station's crew doubled to six people earlier this year, there is no longer room for tourists who pay tens of millions of dollars for a trip on a Russian spacecraft from Earth, said Sergei Krikalyov, the chief of the Cosmonaut Training Centre.
Russia's Soyuz spacecraft will provide the only link to the station after the planned retirement of the US shuttle fleet next year.
Each Soyuz craft can accommodate three people. With the doubling of the station's permanent crew, Russia will now make four, rather than two, launches each year to allow for crew rotation. A permanent crew of six means the space programme has to have two Soyuz ships permanently docked at the station to be used in case of emergency.
Canadian Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte returned to Earth last month after a stint as the seventh paying space tourist aboard the station. Laliberte, the first professional artist to fly to space, paid $35 million (R262m) for a 10-day trip to the station.
"When there was a spare place, the space tourist could fly together with the main crew and return back with them," Krikalyov said. - Sapa-AP
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