Roscosmos: Show us the money for Soyuz

Virginia-based Space Adventures, which had announced the conclusion of an agreement with Russian Federal Space Agency and Rocket Space Corporation Energia (RSC Energia) to commercially offer three seats on the Soyuz spacecraft bound for the International Space Station (ISS), beginning in 2013, has not signed any contract neither with Roscosmos, nor with RSC-E, Roscosmos Human Spaceflight Directorate Head Alexey Krasnov told Marker and subsequently posted on the Russian Federal Space Agency web site.

According to Krasnov, the a.m. negotiations may commence in spring, provided that Space Adventures finds funding for increasing of Soyuz production, from four to five space vehicles per year.

“This release is a kind of indicator of Space Adventure’s intentions and find necessary funding in the market to finance construction of an additional Soyuz. The number of Soyuzes per year may be increased starting from 2014, provided that the company finds the money”, Krasnov stated, adding that Space Adventures shall finance the additional Soyuz in order to restart touristic space missions.

"Only after that, we will commence discussions with our international partners in the ISS program. There are many issues here, but they have not been studied so far, as we don’t have any subject agreement with Space Adventures”, Roscosmos official explains.

Meanwhile, the Virginia State Senate Finance Committee is expected to hold a hearing on Senate Bill 1447 late Thursday afternoon in Richmond to to direct income tax dollars generated by commercial human spaceflight entities based in the state to support the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority for the development of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at Wallops Island, notes Clark Lindsey at HobbySpace and Doug Messier at Parabolic Arc.

Virgina space advocates seek means to conduct start-up studies to human-rate the fledgling commercial orbital spaceport and to actively pursue suborbital and orbital commercial human spaceflight prior to the end of the decade. State revenue from human spaceflights and spaceflight training sold by Virginia-based entities may provide some revenue to commence studies and design work. The FAA and NASA are promulgating commercial human spaceflight regulations presently.