Russia Holds Ground on Spaceflight
MOSCOW — Dennis Tito will fly aboard the International Space Station next month, Russian officials insisted Tuesday, even though the United States and 14 other countries are arguing that the Los Angeles multimillionaire should wait.
Tito, a former rocket scientist turned money manager, is believed to be paying the Russians about $20 million to become the world’s first space tourist and has been training alongside cosmonauts outside Moscow for the last eight months. The Russian space agency said it has the right to select its own crew members for the station--and it has chosen Tito.
“He must be launched and he will be launched,†said Yuri P. Semyonov, chief designer with Russia’s Energiya Corp. space enterprise, referring to Tito’s planned flight April 30 aboard a Soyuz rocket that will deliver supplies to the space station.
A monthlong rift over Tito broke into the open Monday when NASA barred him from a training session for the Soyuz mission crew at Johnson Space Center in Houston. The two-man Russian crew and two backup cosmonauts decided to boycott the session in protest.
On Tuesday, Russian space officials ordered their cosmonauts to resume training.
Senior NASA officials said Tuesday that they are adamantly opposed to any “nonprofessional†crew member aboard the $60-billion station while it is under construction, but they acknowledged that there is little the U.S. agency can do to stop the Russians from launching Tito into orbit.
“We are not going to put the crew in any kind of policing situation,†said Michael Hawes, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for the project. But if the Russians do launch Tito as part of their next Soyuz crew, he added, “we will do what we have to do to ensure that the crew and the space station is safe.â€
NASA deputy associate administrator William Readdy said the agency believes that any amateur space traveler should undergo six to eight weeks of specialized training at the Houston center before being allowed on board the space station.
The dispute highlights the Russians’ sensitivity that they may become second-class citizens aboard the station, now under construction. Proponents say the station could last 25 years and mark the beginning of humanity’s permanent presence off Earth.
Unlike the 15-year-old Mir space station, which was owned and operated by Russia, the International Space Station is a joint project of 16 countries. The U.S. has the greatest say about the station because it is the largest financial backer.
The coincidence that Mir is being destroyed this week because it has outlived its useful life and is too costly to maintain only adds to the Russian program’s sense of woe.
Theoretically, Tito could be confined to the Russian section of the ISS and barred from the American area. The Russians said Tuesday that they are prepared for that if need be.
“We are not crazy about the idea of spoiling relations on board the ISS. But we think we are in the right,†Sergei A. Gorbunov, spokesman for the Russian Space Agency, said in a telephone interview.
Both he and Semyonov argued that the real U.S. motive for trying to bar Tito is political, not practical.
“[The Americans] are very much loath to see an American citizen visit the Russian segment of the ISS on a Russian spaceship,†Semyonov said.
Gorbunov rejected U.S. safety concerns about Tito’s participation.
“We are sorry to step on the Americans’ sore toe again, but it was us who taught them how to make long-duration flights on Mir. . . . We probably can be trusted to guarantee the safety of a seven-day-long flight.â€
He added that Tito, 60, has been fully qualified, noting that he is a former NASA employee who has completed tough cosmonaut training requirements at Russia’s Star City space complex.
“He . . . has passed all the medical tests successfully; he is in perfect shape--both physically and psychologically,†Gorbunov said. “He gets along with other crew members just fine. Everyone is happy with him. So how on earth can he be dangerous, we wonder?â€
Tito, an engineer who later founded an investment company and launched the Wilshire 5,000 financial index, originally contracted to fly aboard the Mir. When the Russians decided to ditch that station, they decided to honor their agreement by taking him aboard the ISS.
Tito has declined to disclose the exact price of his contract with the Russian Space Agency, but earlier Mir officials had said their price was $20 million.
*
Times science writer Robert Lee Hotz in Los Angeles and Alexei V. Kuznetsov of The Times’ Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.
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