Previous and future space tourists by Zuzana Tylkova

In the year 2001 Dennis Tito, an American millionaire, became the first "fee-paying" space tourist when he visited the International Space Station (ISS) for seven days. He paid for his own ticket for about $ 20 million. After Tito there were four other space tourists of course everyone was multimillionaire. He was followed in 2002 by South African computer millionaire Mark Shuttleworth. The third was Gregory Olsen in 2005. After the Columbia disaster, space tourism on the Russian Soyuz program was temporarily put on hold, because Soyuz spacecrafts became the only available transport to the ISS. However, in 2006, space tourism was resumed. In 2006, Anousheh Ansari, an Iranian American woman, became the fourth space tourist better spaceflight participant. In 2007, Charles Simonyi, an American billionaire of Hungarian descent, joined their ranks as last. And who will be the next?The space flights are full booked for nearest few years. The first and only space line Virgin Galactic had pre- sold more than 200 seats for their space tourism flights, according to company 's president .The first to reach the orbit should be Richard Garriott, American video game developer, whose father was cosmonaut with NASA. His flight is expected in October 2008. After him there will be the first Russian space traveler Vladimir Gruzdev, member of State Duma. He is expected to fly in 2009. Gruzdev is a United Russia pro-presidential party member. The United Russia party may pay the estimated $25 million for the flight from the party funds.

related story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20080121/sc_space/nextspacetouristbeginstrainingforspaceflight

by Zuzana Tylkova for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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Edited by Katarina Rastocna