MOSCOW. Nov 13 (Interfax-AVN) - There are enough space tourists, wishing to visit the International Space Agency (ISS), on the waiting list until 2009, head of the Russian Federal Space Agency Anatoly Perminov said.
"It is a promising sphere. We have a waiting list of space tourists, wishing to fly to the ISS, until 2009," Perminov said in an interview with the Trud newspaper, published on the agency's official web site on Monday.
According to Perminov, suborbital spacecraft for space tourists may be developed in the near future. "Space tourists will not be able to fly around the Earth in such spacecraft, but will be able to fly into space for several minutes. I believe that developments of the Myasishchev Engineering Plant are among the most promising national ones in this field," he said.
He emphasized that safety was the top priority for private space flights. "Special insurance systems should be developed. Everything has to be checked and re-checked a thousand times, as space does not forgive light-mindedness and adventurism," Perminov said.
He says that space exploration will yield quite a number of interesting and unexpected results in the next decade. "For instance, the U.S. Hubble telescope has recently detected in excess of 500 ancient galaxies. This is fantastic! Who knows what Phobos ground samples will show! I am sure we are in for sensations," he said.