>>If you had $20 million, would you buy this space ticket?
I think I will... <<
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dailynews.yahoo.com
Friday April 27 6:14 PM ET
Space-Bound Tourist Set for Orbit
Russia Going Ahead With Soyuz Launch - (Reuters)
By MARCIA DUNN, AP Aerospace Writer
A California millionaire who's about to become the world's first space tourist wants to lead the charge into orbit by artists, musicians, novelists, movie producers, actors - in short, anyone creative.
``I don't think anyone realizes how beautiful space is,'' Dennis Tito said calmly as controversy swirled over his space station visit.
``If space was something that the average person could really appreciate in the literature, not being spoken by test pilots but by artists, by creative people, even a reformed gang member from Watts. You know, 'Hey, man, this is a cool event.' To relate it to diverse groups of people in our culture, maybe a rap singer, who knows? There's a tremendous opportunity there to add value to our society,'' he said in a recent interview.
Never mind NASA (news - web sites)'s stern admonition that space is no place for amateurs. Tito hopes his Saturday launch aboard a Russian rocket and six-day stay on the international space station will prove anyone can - and should - experience space.
The money generated by paying customers, the financier says, would provide the capital needed to lower the cost of launch vehicles and the price to get people to orbit. His eight-day trip cost as much as $20 million; he won't specify how much he's paying Russian space officials.
His No. 1 job when he gets back, besides returning to his chief executive office at Wilshire Associates in Santa Monica, Calif., is to spread his space-is-for-all message.
``Once I get back from my mission, my entire intention is to just open my arms to NASA ... try to maybe get them to think a little bit differently,'' he said.
Good luck.
NASA waited until four days before Tito's scheduled launch from Kazakstan with two Russian cosmonauts before signing off on his flight, and did so reluctantly. Russian space officials insisted for months that it's their Soyuz rocket and they can put anyone they want on board, an attitude that vexed their U.S. counterparts.
No more space cowboys, NASA warns.
The 60-year-old Tito is a one-time exception, according to NASA and the European, Canadian and Japanese space agencies, and from now on any space station guests will have to meet criteria agreed upon by all the space station partners. Safety must be paramount, the agencies contend.
Tito agrees criteria are needed and points to himself as the perfect role model, a space enthusiast long before he struck it rich.
The tycoon became smitten with space travel while growing up in Queens, N.Y., the oldest child of working-class Italian immigrants whose ancestors came from the town of Tito in southern Italy. ``If you want to know what my house was like, just look at the set of `All in the Family,''' Tito said.
Sputnik, the world's first artificial satellite launched by the Soviet Union in 1957, sparked his teen-age imagination.
Tito earned bachelor's and master's degrees in aerospace engineering and went to work in 1964 for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. He charted flight paths for NASA's Mariner Mars probes, earning $15,000 a year. But he yearned for more - more money.
Tito founded Wilshire Associates in the early 1970s and by age 40 had made his first million. The millions kept piling up; the investment firm now manages more than $10 billion in assets and advises on $1 trillion in assets.
With disposable income galore, Tito toyed with the idea of flying to Mir in the early 1990s. The Russians had just sent up a Japanese journalist and a British chemist for cash, and Tito wanted to be the next guest cosmonaut. But the Soviet Union's collapse ruined his plans - until the MirCorp company came calling in April 2000 in hopes of keeping Mir afloat.
Tito put millions into an escrow account that the Russian space program could access once he was launched to Mir, and moved from his Pacific Palisades mansion into a spartan apartment at cosmonaut headquarters in Star City, outside Moscow. There, the 5-foot-5, 140-pound, fit-looking businessman threw himself into training. ``The Russians didn't cut any corners,'' he boasted.
When Russia decided to sink its 15-year-old space station, officials offered Tito an alternative destination - the international space station, barely 21/2 years old. Another Soyuz spacecraft was needed at the space station as a fresh lifeboat, and the third, empty seat was offered to him.
His switched ticket set off a contentious debate between the Russian Space Agency and NASA and all the other space station partners. The disagreement crescendoed last month when Tito was barred from joining his two Russian crewmates in space station training at Johnson Space Center in Houston. The cosmonauts boycotted their training for one day, then relented - with the understanding Tito would be on board with them no matter what.
Tito is thrilled with the change in travel plans. ``They're different star hotels,'' he said of the two space stations.
He takes special delight in launching from the same pad where Sputnik took off on Oct. 4, 1957, and where the world's first spaceman, Yuri Gagarin, took off on April 12, 1961 - 40 years ago this month.
Tito will be the third American to be launched aboard a Russian rocket, but the first to land in a Russian spacecraft. The Soyuz capsule parachutes down into remote Kazakstan.
Tito also will be the oldest person to be launched aboard a Russian rocket, and the third-oldest person to fly in space. John Glenn flew at age 77, Story Musgrave at 61. (Tito's crewmates are 50 and 51, making this the oldest space crew ever.)
All three of Tito's 20-something children are at the Baikonur Cosmodrome for his launch.
Tito, who's divorced, said his children accept his unusual choice in vacation, shrugging it off as ``typical dad.'' His own father, long dead, would have thought he was crazy. His mother, also dead, cried for nine months after he left New York for California, ``so I can imagine she'd cry on this one.''
Tito insists he is not afraid or even nervous about his flight.
``If you're going to die of natural causes, does it pay to sit at home and be afraid to cross the street? I mean, like Howard Hughes. What did he do? He became a recluse and was afraid of germs,'' Tito said.
``The main thing is, I'm not crazy |
