MirCorp Expected To
Announce American As First Space Tourist
MirCorp is expected to announce on
June 19 that Dennis Tito, an American businessman and former
aerospace engineer, will become the first tourist to visit the Mir
space station. Tito would fly to Mir as a "citizen space
explorer", MirCorp's preferred term for a space tourist, as
early as January of 2001, as part of either the  second
or third commercial crew to visit Mir. While neither the financial
details nor the length of Tito's trip to Mir have been revealed,
the trip is expected to cost US$20 million, and last seven to ten
days. Tito must undergo a rigorous physical and psychological
examination before he's cleared for the mission, though he does
not anticipate any problems. After the tests, Tito will train for
the mission, learn spacecraft mechanics and study basic Russian.
 Dennis
Tito is founder, and 70% owner, of Wilshire Associates, a Santa
Monica-based investment firm. Wilshire Associates advises hundreds
of large pension funds and directly manages US$11 billion in
investment and pension funds. However the company is best known
for its Wilshire 5,000 stock index which tracks nearly all U.S.
publicly traded companies. Tito, described as risk averse by
business associates, built his business career using quantitative
analysis to reduce risk in investing. While withdrawing a bit from
his business, he is currently working on an enhanced index fund
which aims to reduce the risk of traditional index funds.
The
son of Italian immigrants, Tito,
59, has a bachelor’s and
graduate degree in aeronautics and astronautics from New York
University. He worked at Jet Propulsion Laboratory during the
1960s, leaving the world of aerospace in the 1970s, starting
Wilshire in 1975. Tito's estimated net worth is between US $200 -
250 million.
Tito ran into one of the investors of Mircorp at an April black
tie gala celebrating the anniversary of the flight of Apollo 13.
The next day he and Mircorp closed the deal.
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