RKK Energia Confirms Private Trip To the Moon

Teancum writes "RKK Energia, the prime contractor for the Russian space program and the company who builds the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, recently confirmed negotiations are underway with space tourism company Space Adventures for a privately financed crewed flight around the Moon. While the offer and purchase of at least one seat has been discussed earlier, this is the first time Energia has confirmed the negotiations and has gone into at least some details in terms of what they are expecting to have happen with this flight and the approximate timeframe for when this flight would take place: sometime in 2016 or 2017."

Trip AROUND the moon, not TO the moon

[Fished]

Note that they are apparently just orbiting the moon, not landing. May seem like a "minor detail", but the engineering problems are of an entirely different magnitude.