That was the request of domestic doyenne Martha Stewart to members of the International Space Station crew she interviewed earlier this week, USA Today reported. “Suni, please take care of Charles while he’s there,” Stewart said to NASA astronaut Suni Williams, one of the three members of the current ISS crew. The “Charles” in question is Charles Simonyi, the former Microsoft exec who, besides being Stewart’s significant other, is in training in Russia at the moment for an April flight to the ISS as the fifth tourist to visit the orbiting outpost. “We’ll take care of him, don’t you worry,” Williams replied.

So how eager are Russians to fly tourists on their Soyuz missions to the ISS? One answer comes from Russian defense minister Sergei Ivanov, who invited Indians to buy rides to the ISS as tourists while on a trip to India. “You could be a space tourist, if you have the money,” Ivanov said, according to the Indian newspaper The Hindu.

Other Russians aren’t so fond of flying tourists on such flights. In a commentary published by the Russian news agency RIA Novosti, Andrei Kislyakov criticizes the practice, saying that the Russian program “badly needs experienced and practiced professionals rather than amateurs.” the money such tourists provide, at about $20 million each, helps the Russian space agency, Kislyakov admits, but the small number of tourists means that the money “cannot be viewed as a sizeable contribution to the Russian space effort.”

Kislyakov, however, is much more supportive of suborbital space tourism, calling it “safer and cheaper” than orbital flights, and complementing the US for passing laws to clear the way for such flights. “We therefore see that Russia needs only American wisdom to rid its space research program of deadwood, and spare space tourists from excessive G-loads.”