Dream trip Science fiction of yesterday is today' s reality. After breaking through the earth's pull Dennis Tito, the American rocket scientist who has made a fortune in investment banking, on Saturday became the first amateur cosmonaut to move about in space in a hired vehicle. He will revolve around the earth 16 times a day before docking with his destination out there in the infinitely wide space. It's a personal triumph for Mr Tito. His teenage ambition has come true 44 years after Russia's first Sputnik flight had caught his imagination.
Few individuals can dare to dream with such freedom.
Fewer still have the determination and the resources to make it happen. But the flight of Soyuz TM-32 is also a new opening in space research. Barring a few exceptions, such as a Japanese journalist and a chemist who have had hitchhiked on Russian spacecraft, travel to the outer cosmos has strictly been a professional business. The general myth that, in addition to the intelligence of a rocket scientist, space travellers must also have some superhuman physical attributes will soon vanish after Mr Tito's heroics. All those fictional possibilities of mass space travel might not now be much far ahead in future.