The American tycoon Dennis Tito had always dreamed of traveling to space. In 2001, and after several unsuccessful attempts, this billionaire who had worked as a NASA engineer made his wish come true and spent a week on the International Space Station.
Dennis Tito became the first space tourist in history and also the second oldest person to travel to space, since he was 60 years old at the time. To fulfill his dream, Tito paid the overwhelming amount of $ 20 million to the Russian Federal Agency , which also eased the mogul’s path to space by removing pressure from NASA, which opposed the trip as “an eccentric quirk.” .
It seems that the desired space trip was not enough for the millionaire, who in 2013 founded the Inspiration Mars Foundation , with the intention of carrying out a mission to Mars in 2018 or, as a deadline, in 2021. Tito’s intention was take advantage of an unusual alignment between the Earth and the red planet, which would allow the trip to be made in less time than usual. However, this plan appears to be stalled or impossible for the moment. The company SpaceX , owned by Elon Musk , has also set itself this goal for 2024 and NASA, by order of Donald Trump, aims to achieve it by 2030.
Dennis Tito was the first to open this new era of space tourism . Seven other millionaires, including Mark Shuttleworth or Anousheh Ansari , the first female tourist to travel into space, followed her example and fulfilled their dream of getting a little closer to the stars. Today, numerous companies are trying to turn Tito’s feat into a common and affordable business option for the upper classes of society. SpaceX, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic or Orion Span are the big names that are being listened to to achieve this goal and the prices would be around $ 200,000 just for the reservation . The entire trip would go between 9 and 55 million dollars.
