SHARON SHANKS | The Cosmos Civilian space travel is laced with controversy

Dennis Tito should be well on his way toward fulfilling a lifelong dream right now. No matter where you stand on the issue his name represents, you have to wish him well and give him credit for having tenacity.
Tito is the American who paid for a trip to the Russian space station Mir but didn't make it before the station came down in March. To fulfill their obligation to Tito (and not lose the much-needed $20 million he committed), the Russians scheduled him to fly on board the Soyuz 2 "taxi mission" that was scheduled to launch Saturday.
That's the simple explanation. The full story, of course, is long, complicated, and full of international wrangling, precedent-setting and debate.
Specter of Challenger: There are so many issues at the heart of this story that it's difficult to find a place to start. But first, note the wording for the lead to this column: "should be." Because of deadlines, this column was written in advance of the launch date. The specter of the Challenger disaster forces this choice of wishy-washy future tense -- a constant reminder that we can't become complacent about strapping people on top of a controlled explosion and expect everything to go as planned every time.
This specter was nagging NASA, too, which is naturally leery about sending "ordinary people" (non-astronauts) into space. The first time it tried was with Christa McAuliffe. Instead of evoking a feeling of success and triumph, her name now is forever linked to a sense of poignant defeat.
There's more to it, but safety is one of the issues that held up official sanction of Tito's flight until nearly the last minute. The International Space Station Partnership didn't grant exemption for Tito to visit the station until last Tuesday. Along with the exemption came a caveat: that "no ISS partner would propose another flight of a non-professional crew member until the detailed crew criteria had been finalized."
Tito was also required to sign off on legal documents prohibiting him or his estate from filing suit if anything goes wrong and agreeing to pay for repairs if he damages anything aboard the station.
Safety: The safety question underscores cultural and philosophical differences between the United States and Russia. In interviews with various agencies, Tito described the U.S. attitude toward spaceflight as "paternalistic" while saying the Russians were more relaxed.
Seat belts, motorcycle helmets, safety stickers on ladders and other such measures are among the plethora of lawsuit-driven federal and state requirements out there intended to protect us from ourselves. The Russian attitude is more along the lines of "you pays your money, you takes your chances." The United States is trying hard to legislate common sense in a world where guarantees are impossible and chance rules.
The Russian space program has a long history of taking paying passengers along and augmenting its shaky budget in the process. Starting in 1978, cosmonauts have been from Poland, East Germany, Bulgaria, Vietnam, Cuba, Romania, France, India, Syria, Japan, Great Britain and other countries. The passenger from Japan was a journalist; the passenger from Syria was a prince.
International destination: This worked as long as Mir was the destination, but its deorbiting March 23 created a problem: The destination was no longer solely under Russian control.
Tito had arranged for his flight while Mir was still in orbit and, until last week, the substitution of the space station was in doubt. Russia is a major partner in the ISS, after all, and exercised its right to send people of its choice to the station.
The mission they selected is a "taxi" mission: sending a replacement Soyuz capsule "lifeboat" to the ISS and then returning to Earth on the old craft.
Elitist? Another side of the issue has some people hot and bothered: The idea that space is open only to those who can pay for it. Space tourism has jumped on the Tito trip as the beginning of a new era of commercialism and profit (clothed primly in terms of adventure, of course). But I don't think we'll see trips to an orbiting hotel listed beside cruises to the Arctic and Hawaii at our travel agencies any time soon. Even if it does come to pass, jaunts into space will be just as difficult to afford as Caribbean cruises are for most ordinary people today.
I'd like to think that space is open to everyone -- that if young people today set their sights upon becoming an astronaut, they'll make it through hard work and determination. This will come true for a very tiny percentage of people, but all it takes is poor eyesight or another physical condition to keep the rest of the hopefuls grounded. As for the rest of us, we never had the chance and we never will.
Dennis Tito is 60 and in good shape. He passed the required physical training and spent months training in Russia to prepare for the trip. He won't be the oldest person to travel into orbit -- John Glenn, at 77, has this honor -- but he will be the oldest first-time space traveler.
The launch of Sputnik in 1957 led him to a career in engineering, and he worked in the 1960s at the Jet Propulsion Lab on the Mariner missions to Mars and Venus. He then quit NASA to start his own investment business and was a millionaire before he was 40.
Even though we don't have the money, health or tenacity, there are plenty of other Dennis Titos in the world who have dreamed of going into space, and no matter how we feel about his paying for his ride, there's a small part of us saying, "You go, boy."