Bass has been cleared by doctors, but is still negotiating with the Russians. Even so, his plans have already made worldwide headlines and captured the imagination of thousands of swooning adolescent fans.
But Bass wouldn’t be the first American space tourist. Remember Dennis Tito? The 60-year-old millionaire faced down NASA objections in 2001 and paved the way for future space-tourist wannabes when he hurtled into the stratosphere on a Russian spacecraft. Tito was followed into space last April by Mark Shuttleworth, a South African Internet magnate.
Tito spoke with NEWSWEEK’s Adam Piore about the eight-day adventure he calls “paradise”-and offered some advice to Lance Bass. Excerpts:
Dennis Tito: Before the space flight, there’s the training and the classroom study. There’s the centrifuge and hyperbaric chamber-they actually bring you up to altitude by evacuating air from this pressure chamber to test your ability to adapt to a sudden loss of pressure. And then there’s the spinning chair which tests your ability to endure weightlessness, as well as the zero-G [zero-gravity] flights. In those tests you have to put on the space suit and take off the space suit in a very short period of time. It takes a lot of dedication and effort.
Also there are tests on a lot of the classroom work because they want you to have some kind of understanding of the systems so that if something goes wrong you at least have some idea of how to correct it. You also get some training in Russian. [He’s going to have] very long, hard days for many months.
I found that the training was very interesting because I did have the background. As long as he is really serious about flying and wants to do it badly, I don’t think he will have any trouble. He’s young, probably is a quick learner. He has to learn the lines to a lot of songs. I haven’t talked with him directly, but I’m rooting for him.
My advice as far as planning the flight itself is to really think out ahead of time what he’ll be doing when he’s in space, and to allow time to really enjoy the experience-to look out the window, view the earth-even get some understanding of what the map of the earth looks like so he’ll be able to recognize the places he flies over. Obviously he should take a camera along and take pictures outside as well as inside.
One [shows] the coast of southern California all the way east to the San Andreas fault. It’s a total clothesline of 150 miles all in one shot. That’s where I live now and all the surrounding area. The other is a shot I took of Long Island. I grew up in Queens. Both of these photographs were on exceptionally clear days-you could see Manhattan and Central Park, a little bar that sort of stood out–and all of Long Island, just like you see it on the map. I took about 800 photos and a lot of video.
A third favorite: Flying over Israel on a clear day. One can see in several of the photographs a clear demarcation of the eastern border of Israel, which is just a line in the sand because it separates Israel from the Sinai [in Egypt]. It was all desert until the Israelis cultivated the territory, so it creates a distinctly different shade from the Sinai desert, which is not cultivated…. It’s a strong line, a man-made phenomenon.
For me it was realizing a dream because I always wanted to go to space. But as far as physically being in space, [it] was feeling the feeling of weightlessness. You can do flips and be upside down and roll, and also always be relaxed because there’s nothing that’s weight bearing on your body. Your body just forms this natural position which is not a straight position, it’s a bent position, which is somewhat fetal, but not quite. It’s very easy to just be in the cabin and close your eyes and fall asleep because it’s like lying down on the most comfortable couch-but it’s even more comfortable. If you’re lazy, weightlessness would be ideal because you’re weightless all the time. And sleeping is very comfortable. You sleep like a baby because you don’t find yourself sleeping on one shoulder. You have no desire to change positions. The other interesting aspect of being in space is to be able to look out at the earth and see [it] go by at 300 miles a minute. There’s so many different textures and colors, and the cloud cover is never the same. Living in space is something that I think most human beings would enjoy for a time.
None that I can recall. I was very relaxed during the launch. In training, they simulate the launch pretty accurately, so you have a good idea what to expect. It takes 8 minutes and 50 seconds from liftoff to being in orbit and weightlessness. Landing there’s a little more apprehension, because you have a parachute and obviously it has to open if you’re going to survive. But then there are pretty high G forces coming in, some pretty violent motion once that parachute is deployed and then a nice thump when you land.
I had all the critical times written down on a cue card. I had that in my right hand, and I had my stopwatch on a sleeve, I set my own watch on liftoff and I was noting every event-jettisoning the escape rocket and the aerodynamic shroud. Most of the launch phase is out of the atmosphere. You’re spending a lot of time accelerating horizontally to get that orbital speed because if you don’t have 17,500mph of speed you fall back to earth.
For me there was no bad part. It was the greatest experience of my life. The difficult part was before the launch, because NASA was opposed to my flight, which created a lot of uncertainty during my training that it would all come to naught. But since then NASA has changed its policy and has become much more supportive.
No. It’s very expensive and there’s a certain amount of risk involved. [Also,] there’s a limited number of seats available, and I think people from different walks of life should have the opportunity to go. Someone like a rock star just brings a different perspective. The more diversity, the better people here on earth will understand what it’s like to fly in space and it will become more a part of our culture, our music, poetry. Who knows, maybe even opera or other artistic forms.
Lance Bass would be the second American tourist to fly in space. He’d get the attention of a large number of young people and I think influence young people in a very positive way. [It] will allow them to think beyond the day to day-and maybe allow them to dream about flying themselves into outer space one day. I think it would be a very positive thing for him to fly.
