No More Space Tourists in Next Two Years

There will be no more space tourists in the next two years, Russian Aerospace Agency spokesman Sergey Gorbunov said.

He dismissed reports that almost a dozen of millionaires were queuing to follow the example the first space tourist, Dennis Tito, and that the Russian Aerospace Agency was allegedly selecting the next candidate from them.

Gorbunov said that it was likely that there would no space tourists even in the next five years. The scheduled expeditions to the International Space Station will be staffed with professional cosmonauts and astronauts, Gorbunov said. "We were fighting for Tito's flight because it happened so that we had one vacant seat in the spacecraft of our first visiting expedition to the International Space Station", he said.

Gorbunov said that there would be only one flight to the international space station this year, and the third place in that expedition had already been booked. An astronaut from the European Space Agency, French national Claudie Andre-Deshays, will fly to the station in October.

In 2002 the third place in the third visiting expedition to the International Space Station will be most likely be given to an Italian astronaut, Gorbunov said.

Every "third place" in Russian Soyuz-TM spacecraft that will be occupied by foreign astronauts will be paid, but not by a private entity, but by an organization - the European Space Agency, Gorbunov said. "And the payment will not be smaller, but actually much higher than Tito's", he added. Tito had paid 20m dollars for his trip. "This is because the additional astronauts [as received] will be given more time for their work in the Russian module of the ISS", Gorbunov said. .

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