Putting More Canadians Into Space

Folks:

Sad to say, for America at least, but a Canadian is more likely to fly on a Spacex Dragon capsule before a NASA astronaut does.

"Half price, eh?. We're in!"

tinker

Hadfield's seat on the Soyuz will cost $51 million (US), a fee the US will have to pay to Russia due to the contract it has with the CSA.

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I am amazed that we the US Tax payers will foot the bill for this CSA veteran Astronaut to go up to ISS?

Also, I doubt that the Russians will just ask US or anyone else who will like to visit the ISS just a cool $56M and expect perhaps as high as $80M+ per seat!

It's more to do with the complexities of funding for ISS. CSA provides certain facilities for US ISS operations for free, and the US then pays for certain flight slots. That then removes the need for their to be direct flight arrangements for Soyuz, etc. Neither the US or Canadian taxpayer lose out. All this is used in the calculation for how much total contribution each nation has made to ISS, which determines actual astronaut time on ISS for each nation.