6 astronauts will remain aboard ISS for 6 months and 3 of them will return back after 6 months while 2 weeks later, another crew of 3 will come aboard for 6 months....Frank De Winne from Belgium will stay aboard for 6 months with 5 others (I wonder if his chances to perform a spacewalk won't be reduced by that).

The trick is to have two Soyuz spacecrafts simultaneously docked and not a third one (not enough docking hatches with the Progress and ATVs added) and thus there will be periods with only 3 and no periods with 9 astronauts.

While the Soyuz spacecraft is considerably cheaper than the Shuttle, is there any way to develop an even cheaper spacracraft? The shuttle was so much the solution in the 70's that NASA didn't even think about an emergency capsule (there'd always be a shuttle available).
Should the spacecraft have wings and land on wheels (good for tourism but a lot of dead weight) or be as small as possible and stay as long as possible (not good for short trips and no reusable parts).