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equipment compartment with rescue and environmental control / life support systems.

By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV
.c The Associated Press
ZHUKOVSKY, Russia (AP) - A top Russian aerospace company on Thursday presented a mock-up of a reusable ship for space tourists ready to pay $100,000 to spend three minutes in zero gravity on a suborbital flight. The company said 100 candidates have already signed up.
The three-seat S-XXI ship accommodates a pilot and two passengers and relies on technologies developed for the Soviet Buran space shuttle, which made a flawless unmanned maiden flight in 1988 before being scrapped for lack of funds.

``Our firm has developed the Buran and put its technology into this project,'' said Valery Novikov, head designer at the Myasishchev Design Bureau, which is developing the suborbital ship on order from a private Russian company called Suborbital Corporation.

The S-XXI will be mounted on top of a M-55 carrier aircraft that will take it to the altitude of 56,100 feet. After the ship is released from the carrier, its own solid-fuel rocket engine will propel it to an altitude of just over 60 miles, after which the S-XXI will slide back into the atmosphere and land at a regular airfield like a conventional plane. The entire mission from takeoff to landing will take about one hour.

The International Space Station orbits at an altitude of about 250 miles, while the space shuttles' orbits usually range between 100 to 350 miles above the Earth.

Suborbital Corporation is working in close cooperation with Space Adventures, a U.S. company that helped the first space tourist Dennis Tito broker his flight to the International Space Station atop a Russian Soyuz rocket.
Tito reportedly paid the Russian space agency $20 million for an eight-day trip to space last year, and the next space tourist, South African Internet tycoon Mark Shuttleworth, is scheduled to fly to the station in April.

Space Adventures President Eric Anderson said about 100 people have already booked seats on a future suborbital ship that is expected to become operational in three years. ``After today we'll have twice as many clients,'' he added.

Planners insisted the brief flight will be worth the hefty price.
``A passenger will experience weightlessness and enjoy the view of the Earth from space,'' Novikov said. ``It will be a grandiose experience.''

The ship's mock-up was presented at an air base in Zhukovsky near Moscow that has served as Russia's top flight test center for decades.

Suborbital Corporation chief Sergei Kostenko said it would cost $10 million to build and test the S-XXI. The entire program - which envisages acquiring two carrier aircraft and seven suborbital ships - will cost approximately $60 million. Kostenko said the project is financed by Western investors whom he refused to name.

AP-NY-03-14-02 1123EST

Copyright 2002 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.

PHOTO: The Cosmopolis XXI Aerospace System consists of a carrier aircraft, the M-55X, and a manned rocket module, the C-21. The module is a lifting body Reusable Launch Vehicle built around a 3-seat passenger capsule. It also includes an engine unit and an equipment compartment with rescue and environmental control / life support systems.