Probably not--they'll fly a cosmonaut instead. But despite the fact that there are four candidates, there may not be a space tourist flight this fall. According to Av Week, Russia is bidding up the price. They think they undercharged Tito and Shuttleworth, and now want to get the full twenty million.

I'm having trouble understanding this. It seems to me that any price they can get above the perceived value of sending their own cosmonaut should be acceptable--they should simply accept the highest qualified bid. They don't have a lot of time to dicker over this--whoever it is has to start training Real Soon.

Could this be what happens when you don't quite understand how the market determines the price? I've come across a lot of left-wing types who think that a "price" is something set and fixed forever. Maybe they should just put it on ebay with a $20 million reserve and see what happens.

It's quite possible that that's exactly the problem. They don't quite have the capitalism thing down yet.