Moscow. May 28. INTERFAX-Glavkosmos plans to offer flight seats on the Soyuz spacecraft for space tourists by the end of 2023, the head of the company Dmitry Loskutov said.
"Now we are conducting this work (preparing for a commercial launch - IF) in two directions at the same time - we are negotiating with representatives of potential customers, as well as with our industry, we are creating a material and technical reserve ahead of schedule in order to be able to offer flight seats already somewhere at the end of 2023, "Loskutov said on the Roscosmos TV YouTube channel.
On June 25, 2019, the state corporation Roscosmos announced that the rocket and space corporation Energia and the American company Space Adventures signed a contract to deliver two space tourists to the ISS in 2023.
In November 2019, the head of Roscosmos announced that the state corporation had ordered the production of two additional Soyuz rockets for commercial launches from Energia. It was reported that the "tourist" version of the ship will be converted to control one person.
In December 2019, it became known that the cost of the flight of the Soyuz-MS spacecraft for space tourists will be 2.5 billion rubles. This amount was mentioned in the documentation of the ship's developer-RSC Energia.
The state corporation reported that Roscosmos and Space Adventure have been cooperating in the field of space tourism since 2001, when the first space tourist Denis Tito flew into orbit.
Enterprises of the industry have already started to create a manned transport vehicle "Soyuz MS" and a launch vehicle "Soyuz-2" for the flight of tourists into space.