Wilshire Associates Founder Dennis Tito Reflects On His Rare Spaceflight

In the first decade of the 21st Century, a handful of mega-rich tourists flew in space. Wilshire Associates founder Dennis Tito kicked off the queue in 2001, followed by Mark Shuttleworth (2002), Greg Olsen (2005), Anousheh Ansari (2006), Charles Simonyi (2007, 2009), Richard Garriott (2008) and Guy Laliberte (2009). As the flights progressed, so did the price. Tito paid $20 million, while eight years later Cirque du Soleil's Laliberte coughed up a reported $35 million. Ironically it was Russia, America's Cold War space foe, which took the tourists to the International Space Station (ISS) via a Soyuz rocket.

But with the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011, Russia's Soyuz is the only way to reach ISS, meaning seating priority is given to government astronauts. The reported price NASA pays per seat is around $75 million until an American Shuttle replacement begins operations – or SpaceX starts sending humans to ISS instead of just cargo. This pretty much has killed Russia’s space tourist program.

When Tito became the first paying tourist, he lived out the dream of countless baby boomers who grew up in the 1960s when astronauts were a novelty. Tito, now 76, orbited Earth 128 times over eight days. For perspective on his rare flight, we caught up with the maverick a while back. Following are edited excerpts from a longer conversation.

Jim Clash: Describe your 2001 takeoff from Kazakhstan.

Dennis Tito: You feel a slight vibration but don't hear the sound of the rocket engines. Gradually, acceleration builds as the fuel burns off. There are three separate stages. At the end of each you have maximum acceleration because at that point the fuel is almost gone. I had a card in my right hand, listing the time from liftoff to when each stage would jettison. I kept a stopwatch on my left arm, so I knew to the second when each event was to occur. They all happened exactly as scheduled, so nothing was frightening to me. The entire launch sequence, from liftoff to orbit, was just 8 minutes, 50 seconds.

JC: When did you know you were in orbit?

DT: When the third stage burns out, pencils hanging by strings in the cabin start to float. You too are weightless but don't feel it because you're so tightly strapped in. I don't recall looking out at Earth on the way up. I was concentrating on the instrument panel and on my sequence of events. Once we achieved orbit, though, I turned to my right and glanced out and could see the black, blackness of space and the curvature of the earth. It was a euphoric feeling, because I knew that at that moment I was in orbit. I said to myself, "I've done it. I'm in space."

JC: Why was NASA so against your flight?

DT: The issue was, who really manages the International Space Station? Could one partner unilaterally fly someone other than the choice of NASA? The Russians had a good point when they said, "Look, it's our taxi spacecraft. We can choose whom we want, as long as they're trained and qualified."

JC: I assume you trained for the flight?

DT: The argument NASA used was that I wasn't qualified. The Russians had been training cosmonauts for 40 years. It was an insult to suggest that they would slip in somebody who was untrained. Yes, they needed funds, but that doesn't mean they're willing to compromise their space program. For me, writing the check was a small part of it. For eight months I trained in the cosmonaut center outside of Moscow on a Soviet-style military base. I lived in a two-room flat, made my own bed and cooked my meals.

JC: How did you feel when you returned to Earth?

DT: I was amazed so much attention had been drawn to my flight. People would be walking along Fifth Avenue in New York, see me and say, "That's Dennis Tito." Usually you don't become a celebrity at my age - you're a lot younger [laughs]. It was also satisfying to see how my flight inspired people. There was so much bad news that year. Aside from the attack of Sept. 11, we had a sliding stock market for a year and a quarter. School kids were killing one another. This was one of the few stories people could feel good about.