Space tourist prepares for voyage

In one of their last days before leaving the planet aboard a wardrobe-sized space capsule, two Russian cosmonauts and a US billionaire computer programmer enjoyed an array of earthly pleasures today.

The group indulged in a springtime stroll, a game of table tennis and a freshly cooked lunch.

Engineers, meanwhile, were finishing up assembly of the Russian-made Soyuz rocket that will blast off into the night-time skies over Central Asian steppes Saturday carrying Fyodor Yurchikhin, Oleg Kotov and Charles Simonyi to the International Space Station.

As the trio took a stroll down the so-called Cosmonauts' Alley at the training centre in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, Yurchikhin, 48, said he was more worried about saying goodbye to his wife than about the spaceflight.

"Yes, I am very nervous: my wife is coming soon, I have to look nice and shaved." Yurchikhin said.

"What launch? Is there going to be a launch?" Simonyi, 58, the soft-spoken Hungarian-born computer programmer who paid £13m (€19.2m) to become the world's fifth paying "space tourist", said he was getting lots of training and assistance.

"Everyone is helping me so much that it's easy," he told reporters.