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suppose that
we should not be surprised. NASA is, after all, a federal bureaucracy,
little more, really than the 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.
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