Space Adventures Plans Dedicated Soyuz Two-Passenger Tourist Orbital Flights

The last orbital space tourist may now aboard the International Space Station, at least for some time if the brokered deals of Virginia-based Space Adventures cease as professional astronauts book all seats on future Soyuz capusle flights to the International Space Station.

The Soyuz flights now in the launch schedule are dedicated to professional space flyers of the government partners of the International Space Station. The space station crew expands to a permanent six in May of this year and the American space shuttle fleet is retired in mid-2010 leaving no seats available for the $35-million tourist class seats.

"It makes it more difficult to obtain flight opportunities on the missions that are scheduled to rotate crews," Space Adventures president Eric Anderson recently told SPACE.com. "I'm actually optimistic, but it's too early to tell," Anderson said. "Even with a [space station] crew of six people it's conceivable that there might be a couple of seats for commercial purposes for 2010 or 2011."

Anderson suggests that a dedicated tourist Soyuz space mission is in-the-works with the Russians. "The objective would be a tourist mission," Anderson said. "The mission would be paid for entirely by Space Adventures for the purposes of tourism."

Such dedicated Soyuz tourist flights would be piloted by one professional cosmonaut and carry two paying passengers and would not begin until 2011 or 2012, if then. Many expect the tourist seats will also go up more in price well beyond the current $35-million as the supply diminshes and the demand increases. MORE from AFP.

NASA may even find itself in the bidding with Space Adventures if commercial space flight carriers Orbital Sciences Corporation and SpaceX fail to achieve human-rated flight status by 2013 and the new NASA Orion capsule and Ares-1 booster are slowed for whatever reason.

Soyuz TMA-15, Soyuz TMA-16, Soyuz TMA-17, Soyuz TMA-18, Soyuz TMA-19, Soyuz TMA-01M, Soyuz TMA-20, Soyuz TMA-21, and Soyuz TMA-02M are all now crew assigned launches through May 2011 for flights to the space station.