![]() ![]() The Los Angeles residents are both pilots and understand the risks. Tito’s wife, 57, said she needed no persuading. “But if I stayed in good health, I’d wait 10 years,” he said. ![]() Tito would be 87 by then and he wanted an out in case his health falters. Tito said the couple’s contract with SpaceX, signed in August 2021, includes an option for a flight within five years from now. Dennis Tito and his wife, Akiko, at the company’s Starship rocket base near Boca Chica, Texas, on Monday, Oct. NASA already has contracted for a Starship to land its astronauts on the moon in 2025 or so, in the first lunar touchdown since Apollo. At 394 feet (120 meters) and 17 million pounds (7.7 million kilograms) of liftoff thrust, it’s the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built. Starship has yet to launch atop a Super Heavy booster from the southern tip of Texas, near the Mexican border. Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic expects to take paying passengers next year. Well-heeled customers are sampling briefer tastes of space with Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket company. But the Russian Space Agency needed the cash and, with the help of U.S.-based Space Adventures, launched a string of wealthy clients to the station through the 2000s and, just a year ago, Maezawa. space agency didn’t want a sightseer hanging around while the station was being built. Tito kicked off space tourism in 2001, becoming the first person to pay his own way to space and antagonizing NASA in the process. The two men both flew to the space station, from Kazakhstan atop Russian rockets, 20 years apart. Japanese fashion tycoon Yusaku Maezawa announced in 2018 he was buying an entire flight so he could take eight or so others with him, preferably artists. Tito is actually the second billionaire to make a Starship reservation for a flight around the moon. “I might be sitting in a rocking chair, not doing any good exercise, if it wasn’t for this mission.” “We have to keep healthy for as many years as it’s going to take for SpaceX to complete this vehicle,” Tito said in an interview this week with The Associated Press. The couple recognize there’s a lot of testing and development still ahead for Starship, a shiny, bullet-shaped behemoth that’s yet to even attempt to reach space. Tito won’t say how much he’s paying his Russian station flight cost $20 million. He’ll have company: his wife, Akiko, and 10 others willing to shell out big bucks for the ride. His weeklong moonshot - its date to be determined and years in the future - will bring him within 125 miles (200 kilometers) of the lunar far side. He isn’t interested in hopping on a 10-minute flight to the edge of space or repeating what he did 21 years ago. The world’s first space tourist wants to go back - only this time, he’s signed up for a spin around the moon aboard Elon Musk’s Starship.įor Dennis Tito, 82, it’s a chance to relive the joy of his trip to the International Space Station, now that he’s retired with time on his hands. ![]()
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