Past of Space Tourism

Space tourism originated in the 1990s when MirCorp needed money to offset the cost of maintaining their space station named Mir. They managed to find a candidate in Dennis Tito. However, Dennis Tito never got to travel to Mir. Mir got de-orbited and Dennis Tito managed to switch his trip to the International Space Station. On April 28, 2001, Mr. Tito became the first fee-paying space tourist when he visited the International Space Station for 7 days. Since Mir was de-orbited, MirCorp gave Space Adventures the keys to space tourism. NASA has not allowed paying passengers to hitch a ride on any space shuttles so the Russian Soyuz has been the only spacecraft that has given a ride to any paying space tourists. The price tag is enourmous at $20- $28 million per passenger. So far only 6 people have been space tourists. They all visited the International Space Station. Only one is currently thinking about flying again and that is Dennis Tito.

The space tourists have been: