Dennis Tito (born August 8, 1940 in Queens, New York, USA) is an American businessman who became the first private person to pay for his trip into space.
short biography
Tito received a bachelor’s degree in space and aeronautics from New York University in 1962 and a master’s degree in engineering from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, in 1964. He worked as an aerospace engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), where he helped plan and control missions to Mars Mariner-4 and Mariner-9. In 1972, he left the cosmonautics field in finance and helped found the American investment company Wilshire Associates, and also created the Wilshire-5000 index, a measure of the assessment of the US securities market. He was the first to use mathematical tools used in astronautics to determine the risks of the financial market.
Now or never
April 28, 2001 is the birthday of commercial space flights. On this day, an American businessman turned out to be the first space tourist in history. He paid for his stay on the ISS, as well as his delivery there on board the Russian passenger transport ship Soyuz. Forty years after Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space, Tito showed that on space travel you can earn money, a lot of money, since he posted a round sum - 20 million US dollars.
He dreamed of visiting space since the time of the flight of Yuri Gagarin. And in early 2000, Dennis began to make his dream a reality. That year he turned 60 years old, and he felt that his chances of getting into space were rapidly diminishing. At that time, the oldest astronaut was Dick Slayton, who was in orbit in 1975 at the age of 51.
And Tito, I said to myself: "Now or never."
In June 2000, he signed a contract with MirCorp, which included a flight on the Soyuz TM-32 spacecraft to the Russian space station Mir. However, in December of the same year, these plans failed, as Russia announced that it was planning to withdraw an aging station from orbit (Mir was burned up in Earth’s atmosphere in March 2001).
Despite the setback, Dennis Tito soon agreed again. He signed a contract with Space Adventures, which was an intermediary for the delivery of individuals to space. At that time, the ISS was a relatively new project, the assembly of which began in November 1998.
Sticks in wheels
The Russian side agreed to take the money from Tito and offered him a place on the Soyuz ship. But other partners in the station, in particular NASA and the space agencies of Canada, Europe and Japan, were not positive. They directly told Russia that they did not recommend a flight to Dennis.
Representatives of NASA at that time, in principle, did not mind the presence of a solvent client on board the orbital laboratory. They simply did not believe that by April Tito's training would be sufficient, since then it was planned to carry out complex and responsible station events.
A NASA press release dated March 19, 2001 stated that the presence of an unprofessional crew member who was not trained to work with all critical systems of stations, who could not respond and help in any unforeseen situation that might arise, and which would require constant monitoring, will bring a significant burden on the expedition and reduce the overall level of safety of the ISS.
The first space tourist believes that his age also played a role. According to him, older people have heart attacks, strokes, and whatever, and transporting the corpse back to Earth would not be very convenient and psychologically difficult. Therefore, NASA did everything possible so that Tito could not fly in April.
Eight months in Star City
But Tito did not give up. He continued his training in Star City near Moscow, where astronauts had been trained since the time of Yuri Gagarin. Tito spent most of the year there, in limbo. According to him, it was not easy. He was supposed to remain in Russia for eight months, not knowing for sure whether he would fly or not.
In the end, Dennis's insistence paid off. Contrary to NASA's objection, it was launched into orbit on April 28, 2001, becoming the 415th man to ever go into space.
According to Tito, all the drama and difficulties are transient, especially since the agency supported the following space tourists who visited the orbital laboratory, and also turned out to be so supportive of private space flights in general.
Dream come true
The first space tourist went into orbit, spent about six days aboard the ISS, and then landed in Kazakhstan on May 6, 2001.
His flight was of great importance, as he inspired a number of investments in private space travel. Probably Virgin Galactic companies Richard Branson, Blue Origin Jeff Bezos, and even SpaceX Elon Musk would not have appeared in this business if Dennis Tito did not fly. His example showed that space flight is available to individuals both in terms of physical fitness and financially.
For his part, Tito is happy that he took part in the birth of this industry, although he attributed all the merits to the expense of entrepreneurs and orbital tourists who came after him. And for him, of course, the trip will always resonate on a much more personal level. According to Tito, traveling was his 40-year-old dream. The flight gave him a feeling of fullness of life - everything that he does on top of that, will be for him only an additional reward.
Dennis Tito - Space Tourist
Tito landed in the Kazakh steppe aboard the landing capsule of the Soyuz spacecraft, which returned him and two Russian astronauts from the ISS to Earth. Dennis, Talgat Musabaev and Yuri Baturin landed at 05:42 GMT. The astronauts softened the fall with airborne rockets and a parachute. Three hours before, the Soyuz capsule undocked from the space station and began its lightning-fast descent to Earth.
In the final video from outer space, Tito said that he personally fulfilled the dream of his life, which could not be better for him, and thanked everyone who supported his mission. When the crew left the ISS, Talgat Musabaev and the American astronaut Jim Voss hugged, and Voss shook Tito's hand. Then Tito and the astronauts sailed their heads forward to the Soyuz, and the hatch connecting the capsule to the station was closed. Inside the capsule, they turned on the power - the spacecraft scooped up energy from the ISS and powered the navigation computer. They put on bulky spacesuits for flying to Earth, checked the tightness of the ship and undocked from the station.
The video camera on the capsule showed the fast removal of the ISS and the appearance of the Earth in the field of view. The capsule flew around the planet once, and then got rid of most of its weight, including a residential module with a toilet and kitchen, as well as an instrument compartment with batteries and solar panels. Only a 3.3-ton landing capsule remained.
Hard landing
The Soyuz’s main parachute was to open at 05:26 GMT before the brake motors would trigger to soften the landing. In the last communication session with the crew , the flight control center in Korolev, located near Moscow, asked Musabaev to give Tito two tablets and salt water to help him survive the overload. He did not specify what kind of medicine they were.
Flight commander Pyotr Klimuk told the crew that the weather at the landing site near the village, located 400 km south-west of the capital of Kazakhstan, Astana, is good, cloudiness is insignificant, wind is 3-7 m / s and the temperature is about 20 ° C.
After landing
After landing 80 kilometers north-east of Arkalyk in the Kazakh steppe, the troika passed a preliminary medical examination in a mobile medical center. From there, the crew was delivered to Astana airport for an official meeting with President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev. After a brief press conference at 12:00 GMT, the first space tourist, Musabaev and Baturin flew to Moscow. Russian space officials hoped for a crash-free landing so Tito's controversial trip ended soon.
Former US senator and astronaut John Glenn called Tito's trip on a Russian ship an abuse of his main space exploration mission . At the same time, he said that he did not blame Tito for his desire to go into space, since this is an incredible experience, but considers this trip to be the wrong use of a spacecraft designed for research.
NASA Concerns
Although NASA prevented Tito from flying until the construction of the multi-billion-dollar space complex was completed, the trip sparked speculation that other elites would want to rise above the atmosphere. Among the pop-up names were director James Cameron, an Oscar winner who was looking for the perfect angle to take pictures of our planet.
Praising Cameron for waiting for NASA's blessing on a trip to the ISS, space agency head Dan Goldin constantly mentioned Tito to reporters and congress in the spirit of his gigantic ego and the cosmic nullity of a Wall Street investor. In a subcommittee of the House of Representatives, he said that this situation has become incredibly stressful for men and women of NASA and that Mr. Tito is not aware of the efforts of thousands of people in the United States and Russia working to ensure his safety and the safety of the rest of the crew.
Security threat?
These protests barely penetrated the ISS’s thick body flying at an altitude of over 300 km, where the first space tourist, a former NASA engineer, enjoyed the fake support of his Allies comrades, the polite hospitality of two NASA astronauts living in Alpha, and received in the warm embrace of the Russian commander of the station.
Filled with the sounds of arias and overtures, as well as the sights of continents and oceans passing by, the serene world of citizen explorer Tito was disturbed only by an early attack of seasickness.
During a press conference, he dropped Goldin's accusations that his presence threatens the safety of space professionals. Tito, who paid up to $ 20 million for a round trip, helped the crew a lot.
Dirty work
Dennis Tito was distributing food in space and doing a rather dirty job, helping the crew and leaving him more time to do the main job.
It was safety considerations that caused the 60-year-old Tito to make his space journey. Yuri Baturin, astronaut Talgat Musabaev and Tito delivered a new rescue capsule to Alpha. The arrival of a new Soyuz was required every six months, as toxic fuel on board Russian ships decomposed and corroded engine parts for a long time. The old ship was left about two weeks before the expiration of its 200-day warranty period.
NASA, a leading partner of 16 countries that collected Alpha in parts, was offended because Moscow sold the place to a layman.
There would be no happiness
But the under-funded Russian space program, which controls the list of passengers for the Soyuz mission, continued the experiment with high-flight capitalism, especially since the cost of the ticket covered the cost of the entire flight. Many years of cash shortages, forcing the Russians to start their tourism business, pursued the space program of Moscow after the collapse of the USSR. Partly for this reason, Russia abandoned the Mir station after a record 15 years in orbit.
Washington paid the lion's share of the cost of the project, but Moscow, which has unrivaled experience in long-term space missions, designed and built many key parts. Apparently, the US opposition to the flight of Tito was politically motivated.