By Staff
It's a decidedly baby step for space tourism with a $20 million price tag, but U.S. millionaire scientist Gregory Olsen is already the third non-astronaut to visit the orbiting international space station.
Olsen, 60, founded an infrared camera company based in Princeton, N.J.
Russia's cash-strapped agency turned to space tourism to generate revenue. California businessman Dennis Tito made a weeklong trip to the space station in 2001.
South African Mark Shuttleworth followed the next year.
Olsen blasted off Oct. 1 aboard a Soyuz craft with astronaut William McArthur, a veteran of three U.S. shuttle flights, and cosmonaut Valery Tokarev from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The crew reported all was well aboard the Soyuz TMA-7 capsule, which was to rendezvous today with the station floating 250 miles above Earth.
Russia warned it could not guarantee McArthur's return next spring at the end of his and Tokarev's six-month mission unless NASA pays for the flight.
The Soyuz twice a year travels to the station to deliver fresh crews and bring home, in this case, Russian Sergei Krikalev and American John Phillips.
They are to return to this planet Oct. 11 along with Olsen.
Olsen's daughter, Krista Dibsie, 31, videotaped the launch.
Her dad holds advanced degrees in physics and materials science.
He defends his presence in the capsule as a necessary step in the evolution of space travel.
Routine space travel.
It fires the imaginations of the rest of us, even if we can't quite yet afford our own ticket.