Russia's Roscosmos space agency is in a bind. It makes money ferrying American astronauts to the International Space Station, but it's going to have a lot of unclaimed seats once NASA starts using capsules from Boeing and SpaceX. The solution? It's resuming space tourism. When 2018 rolls around, Energiya (the main company handling manned trips) will fill the empty third chairs on Soyuz flights to the ISS with tech moguls and anyone else who has the time and money to enter Earth orbit just for kicks. It's not going to be as glamorous as purpose-built space tourism programs (whenever they're finally ready), but something tells us that Russia won't have a problem finding paying customers.

[Image credit: NASA, Flickr]