Russia will send U.S. financier Dennis Tito to the International Space Station as a tourist despite the position taken by its foreign partners at the station, Yuri Koptev, general director of the Russian Aerospace Agency, told reporters in Zhukovsky March 6.
“This flight is of fundamental importance to us, it will bring us a fairly large sum,” he said.
Koptev said Tito’s flight was a purely Russian affair and in no way concerned the foreign partners at the International Space Station.
Tito’s flight could be sidelined only by force majeure circumstances, he said. These include Tito’s recent bout of pneumonia. Koptev said Tito’s health was being monitored.
Koptev said the flight of Russia’s first space tourist could be called off if Tito backs out. The U.S. is “working with” Tito in this respect at present, he said.
Russia’s foreign partners at the International Space Center don’t want the first mission to the foreign space station to be carried out as a Russian tourism project, he said.
The U.S. had suggested postponing Tito’s flight until October of this year and want to send a European astronaut in place of him, Koptev said. The Russian Aerospace Agency does not plan to accept this proposal.
Koptev said Russia had informed its partners in early November of last year that it might send a tourist into space. Tito is scheduled to visit the International Space Station as part of of a mission on April 30.
