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Russia Says Question of Shuttleworth's Flight to ISS Remains Open
By Interfax News Service
posted: 01:00 pm ET
12 October 2001
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MOSCOW -- The question of the flight of South African tycoon Mark Shuttleworth to the International Space Station (ISS) as a space tourist remains open, spokesman for the head of the Russian Aerospace Agency Sergei Gorbunov told Interfax on Friday. He said the talks on the possible flight continue. Shuttleworth is planning to come to Moscow shortly for a final discussion of the contract. Gorbunov said that the South African billionaire has accepted many of the conditions put forward by the Russian side that he initially declined. However, Gorbunov said if the talks drag out, Shuttleworth's flight to the ISS with a Russian crew may be cancelled because there will be no time to coordinate the mission with partners to the ISS project - NASA, the European Space Agency and others. Tentatively Shuttleworth's flight is slated for next spring when he could join the third Russian taxi crew on an eight day mission to the station. However, the businessman demands that he should stay on the station for at least two weeks. This is unacceptable for Russia because it creates a number of technical problems and will require major additional investments. The second condition which Russia initially found unacceptable was the indisputable guarantee of a free repeat flight to the ISS, if the Soyuz-TM spaceship fails to dock with the station. Shuttleworth also rejected the Russian scientific program and suggested his own with his own equipment which causes technical and legal difficulties.There will also may be difficulties with getting approval for the flight of the space tourist from countries-partners in the ISS project because South Africa does not belong to this group and Shuttleworth insists on flying as a representative of South Africa. Gorbunov said Russia holds a fairly firm stance on its conditions, but does not rule out the flight altogether. "The idea of organizing regular commercial flights of space tourists is quite attractive for Russia because it gives an additional source of funding to the national manned space program," he said. So far Shuttleworth has been training with the Russian cosmonauts' team as a private individual under a separate program. At the end of August the chief medical commission okayed him for additional pre-flight training at the Gagarin space training center.
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