NASA drafting rules for space tourists

Space enthusiasts have been awaiting the day when normal people, rather than a handful of astronauts and cosmonauts, can voyage to the final frontier. Now the wait may have been shortened--a bit.

Last week, 60-year-old California millionaire Dennis Tito became the first paying vacationer to blast off from Earth for a 10-day holiday aboard the International Space Station. He reportedly spent up to $20 million for a ticket to join Russian cosmonauts Yuri Baturin and Talgat Musabayev in the Russian Soyuz spacecraft headed for the space station. On April 28, he was greeted by space station crew members Yury Usachev, the Russian commander, and Americans Susan Helms and Jim Voss.

Although Tito's ascension through the Earth's atmosphere was smooth, his dealings with NASA were rocky. Tito had trained with the Russian cosmonauts for eight months, but when he showed up with the Soyuz crew at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, he was initially turned away.

NASA officials were concerned he would jeopardize crew safety. Some also objected to the notion that rich people could buy space rides and jump ahead of the queue of astronaut hopefuls who have spent years in training. This started a flurry of negotiations among the Russian Space Agency, NASA, and the other space station partners. In the end, Russia prevailed, and Tito got his wish.

Now that the space tourist portal has been opened, courtesy of a cash-starved Russia, NASA is scrambling to hash out the criteria under which future nonprofessionals can visit the space station. And because the station is a joint venture with Russia and 16 other nations--including Japan, Canada, and members of the European Space Agency--achieving consensus will not be easy.

The space station could prove to be a popular destination. Before the demise of the Russian space station Mir earlier this year, Mark Burnett, the executive producer of last summer's television hit "Survivor," had expressed interest in doing a "Destination Mir" TV show. The premise: A group of strangers go through cosmonaut training in Russia and, as on "Survivor," people get booted off the show until the group has been whittled down to one lucky person who would get to fly to Mir. The fact that the prize is no longer available hasn't stopped the discussions.

"We're still talking with him about doing a show with the International Space Station," said Jeffrey Lenorovitz, spokesman for MirCorp, an Amsterdam company that had sought to lease the Mir space station from Russia for commercial purposes. MirCorp helped arrange Tito's trip.

But American officials and experts are wary of space tourism, at least right now. John Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, said the current transportation system is still not adequate for taking untrained civilians into space. "Basically, I don't think it should start on anything approaching a regular basis until we have more reliable, more user-friendly accommodations. Opening [the space station] up to frequent space travel is at least 10 years away, probably more," he said.

Charles Vick, acting chief of space policy for the Federation of American Scientists, said that he thinks the space station is more likely to draw interest from corporations that want to do research in space rather than from travel agents selling tickets for a great view. Many companies, especially those in the biomedical field, would pay to conduct experiments in space, he said.

"The medical community really screamed when Skylab was ended, because we were learning so very much at that time," he said. Skylab was the American space station that spent six years in orbit before coming down in 1979.

But Lenorovitz, of MirCorp, says the market for tourism may develop sooner than that for commercial ventures. Commercial research can take three to five years before it's ready for space; a millionaire with cash could be ready in less than a year.

For now, however, it looks like space tourists with big bank accounts may have to cool their, uh, rockets, a little. Members of the International Space Station's Multilateral Coordination Board, which cleared Tito for flight just four days before his launch, agreed that no member nation would launch another nonprofessional until the partners adopted criteria for sending tourists to the station. Those criteria will be developed no later than June, said board Chairman W. Michael Hawes, who is NASA's deputy associate administrator for the space station.

Even after criteria are set, it is unlikely that another tourist would go up within the next year, and probably not before 2006, when the space station will be completely assembled, said Michael Greenfield, NASA's deputy associate administrator for safety and mission assurance.

The way the Russians handled the Tito trip has left a bad taste in the mouths of the other space station member nations. "It's certainly within Russia's rights," to send tourists up to the station without the other partners' blessings, Logsdon said. "But it's certainly not in the spirit of the partnership."

Tom Stafford, former astronaut and chairman of a NASA advisory task force on space station operational readiness, agreed. The Russian Space Agency should ensure that "this kind of unilateral decision never happens again. A process must be agreed to by all partners," he said.

The issue for Russia, of course, is money. The Russians need Tito's millions. Russia's space budget for the year is just $145 million, a fraction of NASA's $14 billion. Since Boris Yeltsin signed on to the $60 billion space station project in 1993, financial problems in Russia have caused delays in its construction, and NASA has had to spend millions to bail Moscow out.

"It's a very critical issue that they get this funding, and I think that's why the Russians are being as hardnosed as they are," said Vick, interviewed before Tito's launch. "This is one way that they can pay for one more mission."

The Russians have sold space to the highest bidder before. The Russians got millions for displaying a Pepsi logo outside Mir and for attaching a 30-foot Pizza Hut sign on a booster rocket that sent up part of the new space station.

Despite its protestations about Tito, NASA might not turn its nose up at tourist millions either. It has its own money problems. Under President Bush's budget proposal, NASA funding would go up just 2 percent--that's less than inflation. Congress has limited NASA's spending on space station construction to $25 billion, even though it is expected to cost NASA $29 billion. The $4 billion cost overrun has forced NASA to consider dropping some of its planned additions to the station, including a habitation module that would provide more room for crew members. But a week before Tito's flight, NASA announced that Italy would consider taking on the task of building the habitation module.

Hawes said there has been discussion already at NASA about where the money from future paying tourists might go, but he would not elaborate. Right now, NASA has no plans to fly people commercially on the shuttle, he said.

NASA hasn't always been so squeamish about sending tourists into space. Space shuttle trips were granted to a Saudi Arabian prince and three politicians--Sen. (then-Rep.) Bill Nelson, D-Fla., former Sen. Jake Garn, R-Utah, and, of course, former Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio, himself a former astronaut. In early 1986, the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle killed seven crewmembers, including the first American private citizen in space, teacher Christa McAuliffe.

In a lot of ways, Tito's flight will serve as the trial run for future nonprofessionals. Officials are watching closely to see how the millionaire will affect the operational tempo of the space station. Critics of Tito's visit feared that he would jeopardize not only the crew's safety, but also its mission and job duties.

"When you're building an expensive new office building, you don't invite visitors in while you're still putting the pieces together," Logsdon said. "The crew is busy up there all the time. The station is in the process of internal and external assembly and having a visitor around would just be a distraction."

Whether the crew feels comfortable enough to go about its original planned experiments with Tito around will be considered when the 16 partner countries meet to discuss future tourism.

Tito may also set the standard for training and liability. Tito's eight months of training in Russia included hours of daily classes, physical tests, and gravity trials. The training program for future nonprofessionals would likely be similar to Tito's Soyuz training, said Hawes, with two additional components: Nonprofessionals would have to train with the U.S. sections of the space station (and possibly with hardware provided by other nations) and with the specific crew they would be visiting. Tito's lack of experience in those two areas was one of NASA's main concerns, he said.

As for liability, Tito had to sign documents agreeing to follow flight rules and a crew code of conduct, as well as a waiver in which he agreed to pay for any damage he might cause during his visit and hold the partners harmless if anything should happen to him. Space equipment doesn't come cheap, and future waivers like this might ensure that space vacations would be strictly for the mega-moneyed.

Tito won't exactly be loafing in space during his starry holiday. He won't have "unlimited free time to float around" on the space station, according to NASA's Greenfield. He'll perform small tasks, such as unpacking and repacking the Soyuz, and changing seat liners. How well Tito performs may help determine the workload for future nonprofessionals--perhaps the next space station tourist will learn how to clean a space toilet.