|
By Karl Emerick Hanuska
 | | The
television still shows U.S. space tourist Dennis Tito as he looks at instruments
inside the capsule of Soyuz-TM rocket after it blasted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome,
April 28, 2001. The world's first space tourist took off on a $20-million joyride
to the International Space Station. (Reuters TV/Reuters) |
BAIKONUR
COSMODROME, Kazakhstan (Reuters) - The world's first space tourist, American Dennis
Tito, blasted off on a $20-million joyride to the International Space Station
(ISS) on Saturday aboard a Russian rocket.
The 60-year-old Los Angeles
millionaire and two Russian cosmonauts lifted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome
on the steppes of Kazakhstan at 3:37 a.m. EDT after a row between Russian and
U.S. space officials had been settled just a fewhours earlier.
The supply
run to the ISS had been in doubt as the U.S. space agency NASA, which objects
to Tito's trip as a space amateur, requested a delay to give it more time to tackle
computer failures on the space station. A deal to proceed was announced by NASA
late on Friday.
Tito paid $20 million to the cash-starved Russian space
program in order to be taken along on the trip. His relatives watched nervously
as the Soyuz booster took space capsule skywards.
``I am thrilled, I am
ecstatic! He's really gone ahead and done it!'' exclaimed Tito's son Mike. As
the rocket disappeared from view, Tito's step-sister Joan cried out: ``He made
it!.''
Russian space officials told live television broadcasts from Baikonur
that the Soyuz-TM capsule, which was also carrying cosmonauts Talgat Musabayev
and Yuri Baturin, had separated from the booster nine minutes after launch and
entered orbit.
Space Tourist Appears Calm
As the launch was
under way, Kazakh television showed a calm Tito in the capsule next to mission
commander Musabayev. A transcript of exchanges broadcast on television showed
Tito starting his space journey by exclaiming ``Khorosho!'' (Good!) in Russian.
Soyuz
is to dock with the ISS on Monday. The crew will return to Earth on May 6 aboard
a similar craft currently docked with the station.
The row between Russia
and NASA was not the first hurdle that Tito, a former NASA engineer, has had to
overcome since he first approached Moscow a decade ago about a trip to the Mir
station -- allowed last month to drop out of orbit and burn up.
NASA has
said there is no place for amateurs aboard the $95 billion ISS, being completed
by the United States and Russia along with Canada, Japan and European countries.
It
complained that Tito was not equipped to deal with space travel and that his presence
might distract the orbiter's crew.
But Tito's fare is a huge sum for Russia's
space program, amounting to more than a sixth of its annual budget and enough
to cover the entire cost of Saturday's flight.
One of NASA's earliest attempts
to put a non-professional in orbit ended in tragedy, when schoolteacher Christa
McAuliffe and the crew she was flying with were killed in the explosion of the
space shuttle Challenger 73 seconds after lift-off in 1986.
Other civilians
in space have included a Briton, a Japanese journalist and a member of the Saudi
royal family, all on Mir.
Russian Officials Satisfied
Yuri
Koptev, head of the Russian space agency, expressed satisfaction that the mission
was going ahead with Tito aboard.
``All problems were on the political
level. But to our common satisfaction we finally found consensus with all our
partners,'' he told Kazakh television after the rocket lifted off.
He said
the flight opened a new era ``when not only professional cosmonauts but amateurs
can fly into space.''
Russian space officials had told NASA that they are
full partners in the ISS and had the right to send whoever they wished on their
quota of flights. They also pointed out that Tito would not be the first civilian
in space -- merely the first tourist.
One of Tito's crewmates, Baturin,
is a former Kremlin aide who also made his first space flight three years ago
as an amateur, after a cosmonaut training course similar to Tito's.
The
station has suffered a series of glitches leaving ground controllers with only
tentative command.
NASA wants the space shuttle Endeavour to remain docked
until Mission Control restores control. It said there was a danger of collision
if Soyuz docked before Endeavour left.
The deal announced by NASA allowed
the launch to go ahead, but required the Soyuz craft to remain at a distance from
the station if Endeavour had not departed by Monday. |
