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Space Tourism Turns Ten »

posted April 28, 2011 by Miles O'Brien


Ten years after his improbable, pioneering trip to space, Dennis Tito is still in orbit – in a way.

“I’m back there and I go back — well, in my mind I go back everyday,” he told me.

Ten years ago, he spent nearly a week blissfully gazing out the windows at the the International Space Station listening to opera music after plunking down a reported 20 million dollars to become the world’s first space tourist.

“I started of course being very interested in space when Sputnik was launched in 1957. But it really was the launching of Yuri Gagarin in 1961 that’s just about 50 years ago that inspired me.

In fact, I spoke to Tito, and five other space tourists in Moscow for the fiftieth anniversary celebration of the seminal Gagarin flight.

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