Cosmic Capitalist
National Review Online, May 1, 2001
I suppose that we should not be surprised. NASA is, after all, a federal bureaucracy, little more, really than the postal service in a space suit. Nevertheless, the surly and self-important way in which the agency has handled Dennis Tito, Earth's first extra-planetary tourist, would have embarrassed even the IRS. Unless you have been living in Mars (and, perhaps, even then) you will know that Mr. Tito is an American aerospace engineer turned financial tycoon who paid a reported $20 million for a round-rip ticket to the Russian space station, Mir. Sadly, gravity, high-maintenance bills, and aging technology conspired to bring Mir down to Earth before Mr. Tito could get to visit. Undeterred by this setback, the Russians agreed to an alternative. They would fly their paying cosmonaut in a Soyuz to Alpha, the new international space station currently being built one hundred or so miles above our planet.
Mr. Tito's is a wonderful story. It is the tale of a man who works hard all his life, who builds himself the American dream, and then uses the proceeds to take a ride on a rocket ship. It is the stuff of myth, partly Ray Bradbury, partly Horatio Alger. NASA, unfortunately, had borrowed their script from the Grinch. Dennis Tito, the agency explained, would not be welcome on the space station. Oh, they used all the explanations, it could be dangerous, someone might get sued (trial lawyers, these days, get everywhere), the space station was not ready, 'protocols' had to be drafted, and the clincher, Tito was not a 'professional'.
If we wanted a reminder that the old, marvelous improvisational NASA, the NASA of pocket-protected dreamers who sent men into space in tin cans, was dead, this was it.
Fortunately, Russians these days know that a contract is a contract, and they insisted that their American was along for the ride. After a brief strike by the Soyuz cosmonauts and last-minute negotiations that included Mr. Tito's agreement to pay for anything he might break, NASA relented, and the millionaire is now in space.
To cash-strapped Moscow this is good news. The price that their passenger has paid for his ticket will be more than enough to pay for the next Soyuz mission, and there are, the Russians know, quite a few others who will be prepared to follow his example. As one Russian engineer explained to the press, " there are a lot of rich people around. Why shouldn't they go flying, enjoy themselves and help the [space] station at the same time?"
He is quite right, of course, but the real significance of Moscow's orbiting tycoon is much greater than that first $20 million. By selling a ticket to Alpha, the Russians are signaling that business in space is going to be far more than the operation of a few communications satellites. Tito's take-off may be one small step for free enterprise, but, for the rest of us, it could be a giant leap. For, if space really is to be opened up, it is going to take more than governments and their "professionals" to do the job. The real work will be done, as it has always has been at every new frontier, by the usual motley suspects, by capitalists, cranks, charlatans, and crackpots, by dreamers, drones, visionaries, hucksters, showmen, and opportunists and, yes, even by tourists.
The Russians now seem to understand this. Perhaps this was inevitable. After living for more than 70 years in a technocratic bureaucracy that disdained the individual and spent a fortune on science they have a pretty good idea where NASA is going.
Nowhere.