I am. With the new Soyuz capsule, we can now take two commercial travellers at a time to the ISS. That opens up a lot more opportunities for folks to fly as space tourists, which is great. Currently, you need to be able to spend 20 million dollars. Apart from that, you should have a spirit of adventure and be willing to go through the training.
The total training programme takes four to six months. Early on, there is a two-week health check. The rest of the programme then takes place in the months just prior to the departure date. You have learn how to use the food system and the toilets, how to put on your space suit, strap yourself into your seat, and what to do while you are in the rocket and after the landing. There is no physical training per se. You get the experience of doing a run in the space suit in a water tank, so that you practise what you would do on a real space walk. That is probably the most physically demanding part of the training.
You start the day at around eight in the morning, Moscow standard time, and it ends at about five or six in the evening. By and large it is an eight-hour working day up there for the crew. Space tourists can basically do whatever they want. Some want to do experiments, others want to take photos, or write a book. It is completely up to them.
For the first night or two you want to be held a bit. There are elastic straps that keep you in position within the sleeping bag. But after a day or two, you usually throw the straps off, because it is quite nice to float around at night. You should stay within your sleeping bag, though, because when you try to sleep outside the bag, the movement of the vehicle will make you bump against something, which tends to wake you up.
Muscle weight drops, and bones lose calcium in space, but in just 10 days none of this will be serious. Back on Earth, things will seem very heavy at first and your balance may seem odd, but these feelings pass within a couple of hours.
If the problem is not too serious, you can treat it up there. If you have a true medical emergency, you always have the Soyuz to bring people back to Earth. Unlike going up, which takes two days, coming down you are back on Earth just a few hours after undocking. Space walks are the most dangerous thing to do. You work with a lot of instruments, which can damage your suit, for example.
Currently, not even a majority of the professional astronauts get to do it, so that might be something that is still a bit further in the future. I would not rule it out, but it will certainly not happen in the next years.
Adapted from Palmer, S., Interview with Norm Thagard, Focus, No 137 (Origin Publishing, 2004), p. 32
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