Before Tito Russia Flew 2 Paying Passengers to Space

摘要

When Dennis Tito blasted into space aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule in April 2001, he made spaceflight history as the first space tourist to pay for a space ad-venture. But depending on your defini-tion of a "space tourist," Tito may not have been the first.To date, there are only seven mem-bers of the exclusive group of people who have paid to journey into low Earth orbit. Yet, about a decade before Tito rocketed into the skies above the Baiko-nour Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, two other "tourists" made their debut at the former Russian space station Mir.