Flights on Russia's Soyuz spaceship costs 2 bln rubles for space tourists - Roscosmos head

ST. PETERSBURG. June 4 (Interfax) - Flights on a Russian Soyuz spaceship to the International Space Station (ISS) will cost about 2 billion rubles for space tourists, Roscosmos CEO Dmitry Bakanov said.

"The cost is the rocket divided by the number of participants. There must be two professionals onboard, because amateurs aren't sent on missions, so this is about 2 billion rubles," Bakanov said at the VK Video Blogger Studio at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.

Russia also trains and transports foreign cosmonauts to the ISS, he said.

"We are entering a very important stage, the transition from the International Space Station to the Russian Orbital Station. Everyone is aware of the colossal risks, the interstate ones, it's very great difficult to cooperate over a 10-20-year period," Bakanov said.

As reported in December 2019, the cost of a space tourist flight on a Soyuz-MS spaceship was set at 2.5 billion rubles. The price was mentioned in documentation of the spacecraft's developer, the Energia Rocket and Space Corporation.