Monday, May 7, 2001
The University Daily Kansan
Section A · Page 9
World
World's first space vacationer returns
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The Associated Press
STAR CITY, Russia — Dennis Tito ended the world's first paid space vacation yesterday with a fast and fiery descent to Earth and an aestatic assessment of his multimillion-dollar adventure.
The Russian capsule landed successfully in Central Asia, delivering the 60-year-old California tycoon and his two Russian crewmates to Earth after eight days in space and a stint on the international space station.
"It it was perfect. It was paradise",
Tito said, still strapped into his seat after it was removed from the Soyuz capsule, following touchdown in the vast steps of Kazakstan. The air still reeked of charred metal from the fierce friction the capsule endured on its three-hour descent.
The capsule — with its crew safely insulated inside — was briefly engulfed in flames before its parachute opened to slow its return to Earth. It landed in a bleak plain in northern Kazakstan and was dragged for a few yards through the
dirt before stopping.
After landing at the Chkalovsky military airport outside Moscow, the crew was whisked aboard a bus and taken to the building where they trained for the voyage in nearby Star City. Greeted by a military band and a strong of clamoring reporters as they got off the bus, Tito made no remarks and appeared tired.
Tito and the cosmonauts blasted off from Kazakstan on April 28 and spent two days in orbit before docking with the space station, where Tito's presence distressed NASA.
The U.S. space agency complained that the station was no place for an amateur, even though Tito underwent extensive training as part of the trip that reportedly cost him up to $20 million.
Even after NASA dropped its objections, agency head Daniel Goldin complained, saying last week that Tito's presence had put the space station under substantial stress.
Tito said the U.S. astronauts went out of their way to show him
Dennis Tito
space tourist
"It was perfect. It was paradise."
around. But before the return to Earth yesterday, American astronaut Jim Voss gave Tito only a reserved handshake in contrast to the hug he gave Musabayev, a video linkup with Russian mission control showed.
The capsule touched down near Arkalky, about 250 miles southwest of the Kazak capital Astana. Officials, reporters and a few curious onlookers crowded around the trio.
Only after Tito was on solid ground did he admit to worries about the trip.
"I was worried that I might not feel good in space," Tito said. "I turned out to feel the best I've felt in my entire life while I was in space."
Still, he said, he did not want to
make the trin again.
"I want other people to make it instead." Tito said.
The crew flew to the airport in Astana for a welcome by Kazak President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who told Tito, "In the past, it was only in science fiction novels that you could read about ordinary people being able to go to space. But you laid the foundation for space tourism."
It is unclear how quickly that foundation may be built upon, given NASA's objections and reservations expressed by some of the other countries participating in the station project.
Yuri Semyonov, the head of RKK Energiya — the firm that built the Russian modules used on the international space station — hailed the flight yesterday as an important precedent.
"We are satisfied with this flight and we see the beginning of commercial exploitation of the international station," he said.
Pope visits Syrian mosque to promote peace
DAMASCUS, Syria — John PaulII became the first pope to enter a mosque, and called for brotherhood between Christians and Muslims yesterday and stepped across a sensitive line in his campaign for better relations among different faiths.
Vatican and Syrian flags decorated the Omayayad Mosque in the old walled city at the heart of modern Damascus as the 80-year-old pontiff slipped off his shoes as tradition requires and entered the mosque.
The Associated press
He walked with Syria's top Muslim cleric, Sheik Ahmad Kufaru, who is in his late 60s and also walked with a cane. Papal aides
Leaning on a cane, he stumbled slightly at the threshold and while crossing the carpeted floor of the vast, white-columned hall glittering with chandeliers. The visit to the mosque lasted one hour and 35 minutes.
The visit was also a natural step in John Paul's longtime campaign to heal the wounds separating Christians, Muslims and Jews. In 1986, he became the first pope to visit a Jewish synagogue.
quoted John Paul as telling Kuffaro: "I can say I am very happy."
After leaving the mosque, the ponti tuffed Muslims and Christians to "turn to one another with feelings of brotherhood and friendship, so that the Almighty may bless us with the peace which heaven alone can give."
The mosque visit pointed out some of the frictions. Plans for a joint Muslim-Christian prayer at the mosque were dropped—apparently to avoid hurting Muslim sensitivities. And since the mosque stands on the site where a church was located 12 centuries ago, some Syrians questioned whether the pope was trying to claim the site back for Christianity.
The pope's visit to Syria, which began Saturday, has also brought him into the riptides of Arab-Israeli rivalries.
In his speech welcoming the pope, President Bashar Assad urged the Vatican to side with Arabs in their dispute with Israel and referred to what he described as Jewish persecution of Jesus Christ.
In Israel, reaction to Assad's comments was stern.
President Moshe Katsay yesterday said Assad's statements were "racist" and "anti-Semitic," while Deputy Foreign Minister Rabbi Michael Melchior called on Roman Catholic leaders to reject such statements "with revulsion."
In Los Angeles, Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said Assad's comments showed that Syria had no interest in Middle East peace.
John Paul's spokesman, Joaquin
Navarro-Valls, told reporters Sunday that "the pope will absolutely not intervene. We are guests of this president and he has expressed his opinion." He added that the church and John Paul have spoken out against anti-Semitism numerous times
The pope — who is retracing the biblical travels of St. Paul the Apostle on a six-day pilgrimage to Greece, Syria and Malta — began the day with an open-air Mass for some 35,000 people in the Syrian capital's Abbasid Stadium.
"In this holy land, Christians, Muslims and Jews are called to work together with confidence and boldness and to work to bring about without delay the day when the legal rights of all peoples are respected and they can live in peace and mutual understanding," the pope told the stadium crowd, speaking in French.
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