MOSCOW, April 12. /TASS/. The time of training space tourists for flights aboard Soyuz spacecraft may be further cut, Head of the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center Maksim Kharlamov told TASS in an interview timed for Russia’s Cosmonautics Day celebrated on April 12.

"Theoretically, yes. Simply certain experience is needed and it will keep accumulating. This reduction can be achieved through additional loads on professionals depending on specific conditions, in which they work, and depending on the number of professionals aboard," Kharlamov said, responding to a question about whether it was possible to further cut the time of training space tourists for their flight.

The accelerated training of non-professional participants in space flights proceeded at a very high level in 2021, he said.

"This experience will be very useful in the future when scientists, researchers, geologists and doctors are expected to go into space. A whole set of such tasks can be devised. We practiced the primary experience of implementing such a program of training last year," he pointed out.

As Kharlamov explained, the program of training space tourists for flight looks like a living organism because it is constantly perfected. "I can say in the affirmative that the programs will be fine-tuned and some training techniques will be optimized," the head of the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center said.

Russian actress Yulia Peresild and film director Klim Shipenko were the first to undergo an accelerated program of training for their space flight. They trained for four months instead of six. Peresild and Shipenko headed to the International Space Station (ISS) as crew members of the Soyuz MS-19 mission together with Roscosmos cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov on October 5, 2021. They spent 12 days in space, following which they returned to Earth aboard the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft together with cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky that had been in orbit since the spring of last year.