The Tito Trek: The Benchmark for Public Space Travel By Leonard David Senior Space Writer posted: 07:00 am ET 25 April 2001 ET
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WASHINGTON -- Millionaire Dennis Tito's jaunt to the International Space Station is being viewed as "one small step" toward a potential giant leap into future tourist traffic in Earth orbit.
Already on the drawing boards are space hotels, gymnasiums, casinos and other facilities. All that is supposedly missing are elbow-to-elbow, super-saver customer flights to space.
If all goes as planned, 60-year-old Dennis Tito starts his pay-per-view voyage into outer space on April 28, sitting onboard a Russian Soyuz TM-32 taxi spaceship, departing the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 3:38 a.m. EDT (07:38 GMT; 11:38 a.m. Moscow time).
Its really the classic beginning of real space tourism. He is essentially our Neil Armstrong because hes the first person in history to physically pay for his own trip to space... The story of space tourism is a story for our age said John Spencer, head of the Space Tourism Society in Los Angeles, California
After eight months of cosmonaut training, and plunking down some $18 million, Tito is set for his weeklong stay as a houseguest aboard the International Space Station.
But is the traverse by the well-heeled Tito more one-upmanship than kick-starting a true space tourism business?
Distant destination
Earth orbit remains a distant destination, in terms of price, contrasted to other exotic and extreme locales offered by the global, multitrillion-dollar travel and tourism industry.
The First Space Tourist
Check in with SPACE.com everyday for special coverage, interviews and reports about of the millionaire space tourist Dennis Tito's flight to space.
Although NASA has signed off on 'space adventurer' Tito's flight, the question remains: should he have pushed the issue in the first place? Take the SPACE.com poll and let the world know where you stand!
For example, here on terra firma, adventure travel packages for sailing to the
Arctic go for $20,000. Crawling up Mt. Everest sells for $70,000. A spin around the world via a small executive jet can put a $150,000 dent in your bank account
"Its really the classic beginning of real space tourism. He is essentially our
Neil Armstrong because hes the first person in history to physically pay for his own trip to space," said John Spencer, head of the Space Tourism Society in Los Angeles, California. "The story of space tourism is a story for our age," he told SPACE.com.
Similar in view is
Patrick Collins, a professor at the Economic Environment Research Laboratory at Azabu University in Kanagawa, Japan.
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