Space tourismThe first space tourist was a 60-year-old billionaire businessman from California, Dennis Tito, who spent six days on the International Space station in 2001. The trip cost him around $20 million, though nobody knows exactly how much it really was. Dennis had started his working life as a space scientist and had worked on three missions to Mars in the 1960s. He then made his billions working in the financial sector.There were several problems before he finally went into space on a Russian supply ship. He had originally planned to leave from the US, but that wasn’t possible. As a result he had to do his eight-month training in Russia before his trip, which he found quite difficult as it was so different from what he was used to.However, Mr Tito says that he found the experience very exciting and he wasn’t frightened at all because there was so much to do and see. In fact he would have liked to stay longer. When he was back on Earth, he encouraged other people to go into space, but very few have done it so far. He said that he hardly felt the take-off into space as it was so smooth and quiet, which was surprising because from outside the noise is huge and very scary. The best part was the first feeling of being able to float around with no gravity and the sight of Earth from space, which was really amazing. He was disappointed to return to Earth after eight days in space, but if he weren’t so old, he would happily go again. Even though his business lost some money while he was away, he believes that if he hadn’t travelled to space, he wouldn’t have become the happiest person alive.Several companies today are planning to take tourists into space. Many rich people have bought tickets, but there is no regular space travel service yet. But if Mr Tito hadn’t gone all those years ago, these companies wouldn’t have been able to think about space tourism. We learn that today ...