Russian Government Allocates $60.6 Million for Future Soyuz Tourist Flight
The Russian government has allocated $60.6 million (4.4 billion rubles) to the Roscosmos subsidiary Glavkosmos to produce a Soyuz 2.1a rocket and Soyuz MS spacecraft for a space tourism flight scheduled for 2024, according to Space Daily.
Glavkosmos head Dmitry Loskutov said in May that the company was already in talks with potential space tourists and was simultaneously working on putting together a reserve of Soyuz spaceships to make the first tourist flight possible in late 2023.
Now that SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft is carrying astronauts to the station, Russia has restarted spaceflights for paying customers. On Oct. 5, the Soyuz MS-19 spacecraft will carry Roscosmos cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, actress Yulia Peresild and director Klim Shipenko to the International Space Station (ISS). Peresild and Shipenko will shoot scenes for a movie titled, “Challenge,” during a spaceflight lasting 12 days.
On Dec. 8, the Soyuz MS-20 spacecraft will carry Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin, Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, and Maezawa’s assistant Yozo Hirano to ISS on a 12-day spaceflight.
5 responses to “Russian Government Allocates $60.6 Million for Future Soyuz Tourist Flight”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Space tourism (super wealthy individuals and space lotto winners) is going to be the driving force for crewed space launches in the 2020’s and 2030’s– not government funded missions.
Marcel
Maybe?
Space tourism has some way to go before they can even equal the flight rate of government seats. Between the ISS and the Tiangong that’s a total of 20 government passengers per year. Perhaps space tourism flights could equal that number by 2024?
The ironic thing is Russia is likely to lead the way out of pure poverty. It seems like they want to fly as many tourists now as possible, and every one of those tourists has to come at the sacrifice of a government cosmonaut.
The era of space tourism being the driving force of manned space flight is probably going to be very brief. Perhaps from 2023 to 2025? Because after 2026 the scale of project Artemis plus the scale of the SpaceX Mars colonization plan is likely to dwarf the demands of space tourism!
SLS delenda est
Getting regular people into space has to start somewhere.
I’m actually surprised at this bit of transparency from Roscosmos with that $60 million figure to build a Soyuz rocket and spacecraft. Basically they will clear $24 million in profit from the launch, since each Soyuz tourist seat ticket is being priced at approximately $42 million (2 tourist seats available on each Soyuz launch).
By 2024 the SpaceX Starship will likely be coming online. Capabile of carrying dozens on people, per flight. Who would want to pay more money, to be cramped in a Russian tin can?