American millionaire Dennis Tito will never forget 28 April 2001. On that day, aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, he flew into space.
"I've achieved the goal of a lifetime".he added, speaking to the American television channel CNN. Aged 60 at the time, Dennis Tito is considered to be the first space tourist: he is not an astronaut by profession and paid to make this trip.
He flew twenty years before British billionaire Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos, the founder of online retail giant Amazon and the richest man in the world, who travelled in space for eleven minutes on Tuesday 20 July 2021.
Seduced by Yuri Gagarin
To understand how Dennis Tito became the first space tourist, you have to go back to 12 April 1961. On that day, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to fly in space.
In New York, where he was born some twenty years earlier, the young Dennis Tito was captivated. The son of a seamstress and a printer from Queens, he decided to follow in the Russian's footsteps.
This dream seemed to shape his studies, and his career: with a degree in astronautics, aeronautics and engineering, he began working at NASA, the American space agency, as recounted in the encyclopaedia Britannica . In particular, the engineer is involved in developing missions to send probes to Mars.
In 1972, he changed fields. Dennis Tito switched from space science to finance. He founded an investment company and applied his mathematical skills to the world of markets.
During these financial years, Dennis Tito made money. A lot of money. He became a millionaire, and even though he no longer worked for the US space agency, his dream of one day going into space never left him.
Dennis Tito's story picks up again in 1991. The Soviet Union began to collapse and the millionaire made contact with government officials.
The topic of discussion? Taking part in a space mission, in return for money. The discussions were unsuccessful, but resumed at the end of the 1990s, as CNN points out.
"The Russians were finding it very difficult to finance their space programme, says the millionaire. I thought maybe I could get involved with them".. Translation: pay to go into space.
The timing was right. At the time, MirCorp, a company that intends to "exploit the Russian space station, Mir, from "private wayAs specialist journalist Olivier Sanguy explained to us in 2019.
Six days on the International Space Station
In June 2000, the American daily The New York Times reports that the millionaire wrote a cheque for $20 million (about $30 million today) to MirCorp to fly into space and join the in-orbit facilities.
The trip never materialised, but Dennis Tito did not give up. In 2000, he arrived in Russia and began intensive training at Star City, the complex built near Moscow where Russian cosmonauts prepare to leave Earth.
"It wasn't easy, he tells the specialist website Space.com . I had to spend eight months in Russia without really knowing whether I could fly or not.
Finally, in April 2001, Dennis Tito arrived at the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. He joins cosmonauts Talgat Musabayev and Yuri Baturin, whom he will accompany into space.
On Saturday 28 April, the rocket carrying the crew's Soyuz spacecraft lifts off. The craft will then dock with the International Space Station, where the three men will spend six days. On 6 May, the capsule carrying the crew landed back on Earth, on the steppes of Kazakhstan. Dennis Tito has completed his journey into space.
A story of tenacity, for the man whom the newspaper Le Monde described as "an ordinary American millionaire. After the millionaire, seven other space tourists have travelled in space up to 2009, according to CNN's count. A list to which we must now add Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos.
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