U.S Space tourist, software designer, Charles Simonyi smiles while sitting inside the Russian Souyz... 
(AP)
Russia won't be sending tourists to the international space station after this year because of plans to double the station's crew from three to six people, the head of Russia's space agency said in an interview published Wednesday.
Roscosmos chief Anatoly Perminov told the government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta that U.S. software designer Charles Simonyi — who has already flown to the station — will be the last private tourist when he blasts off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in March.
He also said Russia has promised Kazakhstan it will send a cosmonaut from the ex-Soviet republic to the station "on a commercial basis," and the only possible time for that voyage would be this fall.
Since 2001, the lucrative Russian space tourism program has flown six "private spaceflight participants" who paid $20 million and up for flights aboard Russian-built Soyuz crafts brokered by U.S.-based Space Adventures Ltd.
The most recent private citizen to fly aboard a Soyuz craft, computer game designer Richard Garriott, paid a reported $35 million for his October trip.
The space station crew is expanding to six largely to accommodate Canadian, European and Japanese astronauts who have been waiting years to live aboard the station their countries have helped create. It should also boost the time spent on scientific research from an average of 10 hours a week to 35.
Russian Soyuz and Progress craft have been a crucial part of the $100 billion station's upkeep and expansion — particularly in the wake of the 2003 Columbia disaster, which saw the entire U.S. shuttle fleet grounded.
The U.S. space agency NASA will be even more reliant on the Russians after 2010 when the U.S. shuttle fleet is grounded permanently, leaving astronauts to hitch rides on Russian spacecraft until NASA's new ship is available, in 2015.
Although government funding has increased during Russia's oil-fueled economic boom of the past decade, Russia's space agency has been strapped for cash during much of its post-Soviet history.The agency was a pioneer in the business of opening up space travel up to tourists.
