First 'space
tourist' announced
By BBC News Online science editor
Dr David Whitehouse
Friday, 16 June, 2000, 11:02 GMT 12:02 UK
The
next crew to visit the Mir space station will include a
paying passenger - a businessman from Los Angeles, US.
The announcement was made on Friday,
just as two Russian cosmonauts returned to Earth after
spending the past few months reactivating Mir.
The president of MirCorp, the
commercial company that now operates Mir, told BBC News
Online that the businessman is Dennis Tito, 59, a former
scientist at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Mr Tito will visit Mir next year along
with two cosmonauts.
'Citizen explorer'
MirCorp President Jeffrey Manber said:
"He has passed the medical tests, he is a serious
candidate and is the first of several 'citizen
explorers' that we are talking to."
Full details will be given at a press
conference being held at Star City, near Moscow, on
Monday.
Tito will be paying about $20 million
for the one-week mission.
It is a sum he can well afford. In
1973, he set-up an investment management company dealing
with pension funds. It is thought that his personal
fortune exceeds $250 million.
MirCorp is mostly owned by RSC Energia,
the Russian company that built Mir and runs it from day
to day.
Bumpy landing
Homecoming cosmonauts Sergei Zalyotin
and Alexander Kaleri landed on Friday in their Soyuz
TM-30 capsule near the town of Arkalyk in Kazakhstan.
Dropping to Earth under a giant,
orange and white parachute, the re-entry module bounced
several times before settling down at 0044 GMT.
Cosmonaut Kaleri said it was "the
most difficult" landing of his three space missions
so far. The capsule "bounced up and down a few
times on the ground like a rubber ball," he said.
MirCorp will be pleased with its first
commercial mission. Not one of its main systems broke
down during the 75-day mission.
Window on the world
Mr Manber said: "We have great
plans for Mir besides the guest cosmonauts. It will be
an internet portal. From a website you will be able to
look out of Mir's windows and watch the Earth drift
by."
MirCorp is also in negotiations with
"several entertainment groups".
Mr Manber also said that he was
excited by an experimental breakthrough during the
current mission.
"We managed to grow a crystal in
zero gravity that has proven very difficult to do
before. It has important pharmaceutical
applications," he claimed.
