If he were up for an extraterrestrial journey, Depeche Mode's Dave Gahan would choose a Russian spacecraft rather than one made by Blue Origin or Virgin Galactic.
"We will never choose [Blue Origin company of Jeff] Bezos, no - I've seen his ship," Gahan and the band's producer Richie Machin told Russia's Izvestiya media outlet in an interview. "Maybe a Russian one, it could be a Russian ship."
The two also agreed that they would not go for a ship made by Virgin Galactic - a company associated with British billionaire Sir Richard Branson.
The musicians statements are timely - as Russia's Roscosmos returned to its ambitions to run a space tourism business by dispatching two Japanese cosmic adventurers, billionaire Yusaku Maezawa and his assistant Yozo Hirano, to the International Space Station in December.
Maezawa and Hirano became the first space tourists to fly to the ISS in a Soyuz spacecraft in 12 years. Between 2001 and 2009, Soyuz spacecraft delivered seven tourists to the ISS under contracts with the American space tourism company, Space Adventures. Various sources estimated that the tourists paid $20 million to $40 million for their space flights.
More Soyuz spacecraft are set to be supplied for the space tourism project, according to the head of the Russian State Space Corporation Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin.
Bezos, who is behind the Blue Origin aerospace company, flew to space in July 2021. In the same month, Branson also reached the final frontier onboard his Virgin Galactic rocket plane.