Space Adventures, the broker of the first tourist flights to space celebrated its ten-year anniversary today here at the Explorer's Club in New York with the announcement that it had scored a deal with the Russian Federal Space Agency, or RKA, to buy an entire flight to the International Space Station.

Challenged by Space Adventures (which negotiated Dennis Tito's flight to the space station) to create a launch vehicle capable of three flights daily, Myasishchev Design Bureau has responded with the Cosmopolis XXI Aerospace System. The three-passenger module would piggyback on an airplane to the upper atmosphere before a rocket delivered

it to its 62-mile-high cruising altitude. First flights are planned for 2005, at a price of $98,000 per seat.


www.spaceadventures.com