Russia plans more tourist flights to space

By Vladimir Radyuhin

MOSCOW, MAY 7. Russia is negotiating with about 10 potential space tourists following the successful space trip by a U.S. businessman, a Russian space industry spokesman said.

``Space tourism has market potential,'' Mr. Alexander Derechin of the Energiya space corporation told the Interfax news agency on Monday. ``It is still a small market but it may grow after the flight of Mr. Dennis Tito.'' The U.S. financial consultant, Mr. Tito, 60, who paid about $20 million for his space flight, returned to earth on Sunday after a week-long stay aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

The cash-strapped Russian space industry sees space tourism as an important source of additional funding. However, the first flight of a paying tourist to the 16-nation ISS station provoked an acute crisis with the U.S. space agency NASA. Americans only grudgingly agreed to Mr. Tito's flight and came out against any further tourist trips to the ISS until the station's construction was completed and a set of requirements for amateur candidates and rules for their missions rules were worked out.

NASA also suggested it might bill the Russians for the alleged disruption of work aboard the ISS during Mr. Tito's presence there. Russians have angrily rejected the charges and vowed to press ahead with tourist flights.

Telegraph reports:

Mr. Tito, who emerged unsteadily from his Russian Soyuz capsule after a week away from Earth declared: ``I just came back from paradise.''

The Californian financier was clearly convinced that it had given him value for money. ``It was great, best, best of all,'' he said. ``It was paradise, I just came back from paradise. Great flight. Great landing. A soft landing.''

Mr. Tito added: ``I was worried that I might not feel good in space. I turned out to feel the best I've felt in my entire life.''

Despite his high spirits, the 60-year-old former engineer was at first slightly disorientated by the return to gravity and was carried to a helicopter on what looked like a modern equivalent of a sedan chair.

Flanked by the two cosmonauts who accompanied him on his eight- day mission, Mr Tito tried to juggle but then dropped the apples the crew were given as traditional welcome-home presents.

``You see, I'm still used to weightlessness,'' he joked. ``But I enjoyed this trip. I've finally had my dream.''

His commander, Mr. Talgat Musabayev, praised Mr. Tito's performance on the International Space Station (ISS).

``Mr Tito was great,'' Mr Musabayev said in heavily accented English. ``He was not young but very strong and very proud man.''

Mr. Tito's visit to the space station was condemned by his former employers at NASA and the dispute between Russia and America over his flight led one Moscow television channel to describe his trip as ``the most controversial in space history''.

Mr. Tito spent some of his week in orbit doing what any other holidaymaker does.

He has been catching up on his sleep and photographing the view from his window. He also relaxed by listening to more than 20 hours of opera CDs.

Mr. Tito's fellow cosmonauts complimented their paying passenger on the speed with which he adapted to space and the way he fitted in with the two crews, the Russians and those he left behind on the space station.

Senator John Glenn, the veteran American astronaut who returned to space on board America's space shuttle at the age of 77, complained at the weekend that Mr Tito's trip had been ``a misuse of the spacecraft''. He said the space station ``was supposed to be for research''.

But as far as Russian space officials, desperate for cash after the collapse of state funding in recent years, are concerned, Mr. Tito's trip is just the start of extra-terrestrial tourism.

``We are satisfied with this flight,'' said Mr. Yuri Semyonov, the head of the Energiya corporation.

``We consider that it represents a new beginning for maintenance of the ISS and the question of commercialisation.''

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Section  : International
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