Titos Crew Has Departed To Baikonur Dennis Tito, the world's first "space tourist," departed for Baikonur April 23 from Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center (Star City) together with his crewmates, mission commander Talgat Musabayev and flight engineer Yuri Baturin.
If all goes well, Tito will return to Star City only after completion of his flight.
The crews left the Prophylactorium, a modern hotel-type building that has housed cosmonauts since the early 1970s, at around 8:00 a.m. local time.
A minivan took them to the training center's main administrative building, where a crowd of people, including relatives and friends, were already waiting in the reception room to wish members of the main and backup crews good luck and "soft landing."
An important flight
The mood at the farewell ceremony ranged from solemn reminders of the crew's mission objectives to lighthearted ribbing.
"The whole ISS (International Space Station) operation depends on the success of your mission," said Col.-Gen. Pyotr Klimuk, chief of Star City. "You will bring the new lifeboat to the station."
"Talgat is continuing his civil aviation career," joked a representative of Kazakhstan's Musabayev ethnic region. "He used to fly passengers as an aircraft pilot and now he continues doing this as a spacecraft pilot."
Despite NASA protests that Tito was not sufficiently trained for his visit to the 16-nation space station, Mike Baker, Johnson Space Center representative to the Russian Aviation and Space Agency (Rosaviacosmos), said "I am sorry for all the
extra burden that you have taken during your training. Your flight is important for the ISS program."A three-man team
A number of guests congratulated Baturin on his promotion to flight engineer. Baturin made his previous flight as a cosmonaut-researcher (a rough equivalent of a U.S. mission specialist}. He also is the
last cosmonaut to have been certified as a Mir space station flight engineer. In response, the cosmonauts thanked their instructors for the training and thanked friends and family for all their support.
Tito, in particular, praised both Russia and his native country.
"I would like to thank Russia and the United States," he said, "the two greatest countries, which enabled me to fulfill my dream."
Connecting flight
After the farewell banquet, the crews walked to the Star City gate to board two platforms that, guided by a police car flashing its lights, proceeded to Chkalovskoye Airport near the training center. This airport is used to support the centers operation, particularly zero-G training.
In the airport, the crews had to clear customs first. Once a domestic airport in the old Soviet Union, Chkalovskoye has become an international facility serving former Soviet republics that now are foreign countries.
Having cleared customs, Titos crew boarded a three-engine Tu-154 passenger jet while the backup crew got into a smaller twin-engine jet Tu-134. This is an old Russian cosmonaut's tradition -- main and backup crews never fly in the same aircraft.
The two aircraft landed at Baikonur about three hours after their takeoff from Chkalovskoye.
The final countdown for Titos mission has begun.
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