Russia is planning to increase the number of flights to the International Space Station. After the tragic accident of the American shuttle Columbia, more space launchers are looking to Russia. Now Russia faces a dilemma: make money and sacrifice the professionalism of Russian astronauts, or reject business opportunities and keep relying on a pitiful budget. The answer is simple and doable: build more Soyuz modules to orbit more often, and more Progress vehicles to deliver supplies to the space stations.

Right now the Russian Space Agency sends up only two Russian astronauts a year. Soyuz has three seats - one is always taken by a Russian, one by an American astronaut as a part of Russian commitment after the shuttle crash, and one is the tourist spot, taken by whoever is willing to spend $20,000,000 to orbit the earth.

All this means that only 38 Russian astronauts a year get flight experience, and usually these are long-term trips, so the Russians can’t afford to send up rookies. This leaves few opportunities for young men and women to gain space work experience. The last short term flight was granted to Yuri Shargin in 2004, because the "tourist’s" health condition didn’t qualify him for space travel.

The extra seats on the two Soyuz modules is constantly booked: German Tomas Righter is going on the next flight, Brazilian Marcus Pontes is heading to space in spring 2006, South Korea is preparing a candidate for the spring of 2007, Malaysia for autumn of 2007, and Chile is looking to put a man on the next flight available.

There’s no money in Russian budget to develop new technologies, so even if the exciting news of raising the number of flights comes true, it’s only going to resolve an immediate need. The SpaceShipOne program is developing inexpensive tourists flight options for the near future, and NASA is constantly working on a replacement for the Shuttle and introducing new technologies. Russia is still definitely no. 1 in manned space flight, but the question is: for how much longer?