MOSCOW. April 6 (Interfax-AVN) - Russia's Federal Space Agency is considering two candidates for tourist flights into space in 2006 and 2007, agency head Anatoly Perminov said at a Wednesday news conference in Moscow.
"We are considering two candidates: one is from Japan and the second is from another country. I don't want to say anything concrete yet, because the issue is still being worked on," he said.
These candidates have not yet begun preparing for the space flight and the issue is currently being agreed upon, Perminov said.
He said that he completely supports space tourism. "Firstly, this is money and secondly, this market is developing at a very fast rate and private companies are part of it. I'm sure that in five or six years there will be a lot of private space ships in Earth's orbit," Perminov said.
However, the private near-Earth spaceship system will be inferior to the Russian and U.S. systems, he said.