Tito The Spaceman

By MICHAEL D. LEMONICK

If the launch gods cooperate this Saturday, a rocket will blast off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and loft a Soyuz capsule into space. A day or so later, the capsule will rendezvous and dock with the International Space Station (ISS)--thus earning a place in the annals of space history. For aboard that Soyuz craft, along with two Russian cosmonauts, will be a 60-year-old American millionaire named Dennis Tito. Amateurs have flown in space before--including three U.S. congressmen, a Russian politician, a Japanese TV reporter and a Saudi prince--but Tito will be the first paying tourist.

He also very nearly became the first visitor to reach an orbiting spacecraft and get told he wasn't welcome aboard. NASA, along with its Japanese, Canadian and European partners in the space-station project, made it clear it didn't want Tito to fly, claiming he would be in the way of the real spacemen, who will be working on the still unfinished orbital complex--installing a brand-new Canadian-built robot arm, for example, that just went up on the shuttle.

But late last week, after months of trying to keep Tito grounded, NASA backed off. It really had little choice. The Russians are partners in the space-station project too, which gives them the right to select their own crews. Kicking them out of the partnership was unthinkable. Not only do the others need Russia's Soyuz capsules (for emergency escapes) and expertise in long-duration space flight, they also want to keep Russian rocket scientists and engineers gainfully employed so that they aren't tempted to sell their services to rogue states.

The only way to stop Tito was to bar the hatch if he showed up--triggering an international diplomatic incident--or to convince Russia that the investment tycoon was unqualified for space flight. NASA tried the latter, but it was tough given Tito's background. He may not be a cosmonaut, but he is an actual rocket scientist who worked at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory before becoming a successful businessman. (He founded the investment firm Wilshire Associates.) He also completed some 900 hours of training in Star City, the cosmonauts' boot camp, and was deemed flightworthy by Russia's space commission. So on Thursday NASA had Tito sign a paper swearing that he wouldn't sue if anything went wrong and promising to reimburse the agency if he broke anything--the closest thing to an official go-ahead that he was going to get. "It's embarrassing," says space expert James Oberg. "NASA handled it so clumsily."

Some observers suspect that the agency's formal objections were only part of the story. "The problem is ego over who controls the International Space Station," says Eric Anderson, CEO of Space Adventures, the commercial space-tourism agency that brokered Tito's flight. Some Russians agree. Said former cosmonaut Georgi Grechko in a TV interview before NASA yielded: "We have a new station, and the Americans are showing us who the boss of it is."

But the Russians weren't going to give up their rights without a fight. It wasn't only principle at stake: Tito is reportedly funneling $20 million into that country's financially strapped space agency for the privilege of spending quality time in orbit. The original plan was to send him for a visit to Russia's aging Mir space station. But when Mir took a controlled dive into the Pacific Ocean earlier this spring, the Russians insisted that he be allowed aboard the ISS instead.

It's clear from NASA's reaction that the agency finds the whole idea of space tourism vaguely distasteful. "That," says Anderson of Space Adventures, "is a huge mistake. NASA needs to understand that what people most want is to experience space, not read about it or watch a few elite government astronauts participate in it." For his part, Tito doesn't blame NASA for its attitude. "I realize that my flight turned the clock ahead of what they had planned," he told TIME last week. "I understand their resistance."

But if NASA didn't like Tito the tourist, it will really hate what's coming next. The Russians have been talking with NBC about a Survivor-type show in which contestants compete for a ride on the space station, and have consulted the U.S. companies Boeing and Spacehab about a new module for the station that could be used for for-profit research--or even more tourism. The U.S. was always able to call the shots when it had sole control of its manned space program. Now that that control is being shared, visits by tycoons and TV personalities may be a distasteful but unavoidable part of the deal.

--Reported by Hilary Hylton/Austin, Andrew Meier/Moscow and Dick Thompson/Washington

With reporting by Hilary Hylton/Austin, Andrew Meier/Moscow and Dick Thompson/Washington