First private space flight to ISS in 2011 (Update)

"We believe 99 percent of people want to experience space," the head of the US company, Space Adventures, Eric Anderson, told a press conference Wednesday.

"Our goal is to have at least one mission to the ISS per year. There are more and more young billionaires who can afford the cost of a spaceflight."

Google's billionaire technology president Brin has reserved his seat on a future flight with a five-million dollar investment in the Virginia-based company which arranges space flights for ultrawealthy clients.

"I am a big believer in the exploration and commercial development of the space frontier, and am looking forward to the possibility of going into space," Brin said in a statement.

Under the deal with the Federal Space Agency of the Russian Federation, two seats will be available on a specially manufactured Soyuz flight in 2011.

Brin, 34, who made a fortune from designing the astronomically successful Internet search engine Google with partner Larry Page, does not yet have a definite date for his trip to the stars.

"He is planning to go, he has brought five million dollars as an advance. He may be flying in three years, maybe in five years, but he will go. He has to train," Anderson said.

Space Adventures made headlines in 2001 when client Dennis Tito became the world's first privately funded space flight participant.

Tito, a US national, was the first space tourist on the ISS in 2001, followed by South African Mark Shuttleworth in 2002, American Greg Olsen in 2005, and Anousheh Ansari, an American of Iranian origin, in 2006.

Hungarian-born American Charles Simonyi became only the world's fifth space tourist in April this year, describing his 25-million-dollar trip as "terrific."

Video game programmer and designer, Richard Garriott, set to become the sixth space tourist in October, said he was excited to be following in the path of his NASA astronaut father Owen Garriott, who flew in 1973 and 1983.

"I will join Sergey Volkov, who is the son of a cosmonaut. We will travel back to earth together. We are the second space generation," he told the press conference.

"I am already thinking of my second trip to space. I am in the business of video games, so I might think of a new game," he joked.

Garriott revealed that the necklace he was wearing, resembling a snake, was designed by him when he was a child. "I always wear it. I gave it once to my father for a spaceflight so it has been already in the space."

Anderson said the company would announce later in the year the name of the person planning to go into space in 2009, while the 2011 space tourists would be revealed later.

Russian officials vowed the 2011 flight to the ISS would not interfere with the running of the space station.

"On the contrary, it shall add flexibility and redundancy to our ISS transportation capabilities," said Alexey Krasnov, from the Russian agency, in a statement.

Brin has already helped finance another Space Adventures project called "Zero G," which organizes zero gravity flights from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and Las Vegas airport.

Two hundred such flights have been carried out on a Boeing 727-200 between 2004 and 2008, allowing about 5,000 people to experience weightlessness for some 30 seconds 15 times during a 90-minute flight, said Space Adventures director Peter Diamandis.

Brin was shown on a video floating inside one of the planes during one of those trips, accompanied by Anderson. The flights cost 135,000 dollars for a group of 35, or 3,950 dollars per person.

"Every Russian of my generation has dreamed about being a cosmonaut," the head of the Russian branch of the Space Adventures, Sergey Kostenko, told AFP.

"I can only rejoice in the way things have evolved. It's the spirit of our age."

© 2008 AFP

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First private space flight to ISS in 2011 (Update)

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