LOS ANGELES - Dennis Tito has just bought himself a ticket to space.
After a lifetime growing rich from his Californian investment strategy company, it was something he just had to do. If all goes well, he will shoot up into the skies some time next year and become the first tourist on the newly privatised Russian space station Mir.
The price? A cool $US20 million ($42 million), but Tito reckons it is worth every penny. "This is something I've dreamed about my whole life," he says.
And the money may be just what is needed to keep the Mir project afloat.
The Russian space station, now owned by a private consortium of Dutch and United States investors, has been on the verge of shutting down ever since a fire and collision with a cargo ship three years ago.
Now, the station's management hopes there is a possibility of upgrading Mir's 15-year-old computer system, streamlining its dangerous patchwork of dangling wires and cables, repairing the leaks, and turning it into a full-blown commercial venture.
Tito is in Moscow, where he will receive intensive training over the next few months to prepare him for the trip.
Over the years, he has become accustomed to viewing Planet Earth from a lofty perch: his hilltop estate in the Pacific Palisades above Los Angeles.
But he also has professional credentials on his side. Before founding the successful Wilshire Associates investment firm, he was a rocket scientist who helped send Mariner spacecraft to Mars and Venus.
And there is more to his high ticket price than the last hurrah of a 59-year-old man with an undiminished sense of adventure: it is effectively turning him into a venture capitalist of cosmic proportions.
MirCorp, as the space station's new management is known, wants to turn the station into the premier site for geology, pharmaceuticals and computer hardware research in space.
It wants to film IMAX movies in space, launch a Website and even a television gameshow. And it wants to float the whole venture on the stock exchange.
- INDEPENDENT
One $42m ticket sold so far for space trip
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