It was a giant leap for the tourist industry and the most expensive holiday in history. Dennis Tito, a 60-year old from California, blasted off yesterday for his first trip to space. The trip [?] him 30,000 pounds per mile! The International Space Station, [?] he will land tomorrow, orbits 220 miles above the Earth. The 8 day trip will cost him 14 million pounds!
[?] Dennis is paying 30,000 pounds per mile for his space flight, a first class roundtrip ticket from London to New York costs 1 pound per mile!
The Soyez rocket with Tito on board [?] from the launch pad of the Baikonur Cosmodrome under sunny blue skies. The Cosmodrome is on the barren steppes of Kazakhstan in central Asia. Tito was wearing a white spacesuit and a plexiglass helmet. He had a wide smile on his face.
A ground controller asked, "How do you feel?" Tito replied, "Khorosho", which means "good" in Russian.
Tito wasn't [?] to take much with him on his expensive trip. He was only permitted 7 kg of luggage, a Dictaphone, two pens [?] can work in a place without gravity, three cameras, and nine CDs. On the CDs, he had songs from the Beatles and from Andrea Bocelli, the blind Italian tenor.
As Tito zoomed skyward after take off, he must have cared little. He was not the first [?], or non-professional, astronaut to fly into space. [?], three congressmen who work for the US government and a Saudi prince have all flown into space before. However, Tito was the first paying tourist. He was the first amateur to fly into space and pay the full price of his trip.
The final countdown began at 3 AM Moscow time, [?] Tito and his companions, Talgat Musabayev, and Yuri Baturin were awoken at their hotel. Talgat Musabayev was the flight commander. Yuri Baturin used to be a politician, [?] he became a cosmonaut, or astronaut for the Russians, three years ago.
[?] they woke up at 3 AM, a team of doctors washed the crew with a special alcohol lotion. They then dressed in disinfected long underwear and ordinary uniforms. Then, they ate breakfast and had a final meeting with relatives. There [?] 25 family members to say "goodbye" to Tito and wish him a good and safe journey. Some of Tito's business partners, friends, and his former wife, also came to Kazakhstan to wish him a good trip.
After breakfast, Tito took a 40 minute ride to the test centre. There, he put on his special space suit. Following a superstition, the crew was not allowed to watch the setting up of the booster rocket. They then rode a minibus to the launch pad. Many years before, Yuri Gargarin blasted off from the same launch pad and [?] the first man in space.
While in space, Tito will eat Russian soups, juice, tea and coffee. [?] will all be in toothpaste-like tubes. He will also eat fruit, ready cooked vegetables, and canned meats. He said that he would miss a good hamburger.
It was not easy for Tito to become the first paying space tourist. In preparation, he had zero gravity flights and have head spinning sessions in a centrifuge. The centrifuge was designed to make him experience gravitational forces eight times stronger than the ones on Earth. This preparation may have caused many more ordinary citizens to decide that they didn't want to take a trip to space.