Billionauts Back in Business By 2012

Guy Laliberte (first row, far right) aboard the International Space Station.

Pop those champagne corks, all you would-be space tourists. It looks like you’ll get to vacation in orbit after all.

A pair of Russian media outlets say that the country’s space program will begin taking tourists to the International Space Station beginning in 2012. Seven tourist flights were flown between 2001-09, ending with Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte’s holiday last September.

Flights had been suspended because of the doubling of the station crew to 6 astronauts. The space shuttle is also set to retire later this year, putting the sole burden for crew transport on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft. To handle the extra load, the Russians will double the annual flight rate of the three-person ferry from two to four.

Russian officials said on Thursday that the country would start to produce five Soyuz vehicles per year. The extra flight would be specially chartered for space tourism by U.S.-based Space Adventures. Production of the additional capsules, which take about two years to complete, would begin in mid-year.

The flights won’t be cheap. The first space tourism flight cost Dennis Tito a cool $12 million in 2001; Laliberte’s flight last fall was estimated in the range of $45 million. Some reports have the cost of future flights rising even higher. Russia will charge NASA $51 million per astronaut once the space shuttle is retired.

And who will be next space tourist? Possibly Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who has put down a deposit on a flight. Of course, $50 million is pocket change to the Silicon Valley mogul, whose net worth is $17.5 billion.