You can pay for a seat on the Russian Soyuz craft that regularly fly to the International Space Station (ISS).

BBC: NEWS | Science/Nature | Space future: Race for the X-Prize

The Shenzhou themselves are based on Russia's Soyuz craft but, according to Phillip Clark, a British-based consultant and expert on the Chinese space programme, they are not a straight knock-off.

ECONOMIST: China in space

The Moscow talks coincided with the deployment of a Soyuz craft to ferry a new crew to the ISS. The existing crew - two Americans and a Russian - had a dramatic re-entry that took their craft more than 400 kilometres (250 miles) beyond its intended landing site.

BBC: Mars rover (Nasa)

Russia said it had been unwilling to postpone the Soyuz mission because the cosmonauts must replace the space station's escape craft, whose service lifetime expires at the end of the month.

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