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He took tourism up to the stars

A few millions might one day take you to the moon and back. But Mark Shuttleworth, the world's second space tourist, says his was the kind of trip Mastercard can never buy

PHOTO: AP

LIFE'S DREAM Mark Shuttleworth: `I asked myself what is the one thing I want to do before I die. Then immediately the answer came to me — fly in space'

Space travel sure has come a long way since the time of Yuri Gagarin. Now we have a permanent manned outpost in space in the form of the International Space Station (ISS), the Chinese can put a man in space and an international effort might see man again on the moon, and in the not-so-distant future, on Mars too.

But the biggest achievement is that space travel is not longer sci-fi stuff. You can actually buy yourself a ticket to space with a few tens of mils. That was exactly what Mark Shuttleworth, the South African businessman, did with his spare change. He became the world's second space tourist. (The first was Dennis Tito, a Californian billionaire.)

An open-source software entrepreneur by profession, Shuttleworth was in Bangalore to attend a discussion with Linux developers. But predictably, everyone was more interested in knowing every detail of his trip to space — including how he used the toilet out there.

The boyhood dream...

"Since I was ye high, space has been my absolute dream. Growing up in South Africa you can see a lot of stars in the southern hemisphere. But I could not head for them, so I took up technology. Then one day I found myself in a situation where I could do almost anything. That was quite hard because it makes you think what you want to do everyday. I am very conscious of the fact that time is very precious. I asked myself what is the one thing I want to do before I die. Immediately the answer came to me: fly in space. It was a terrifying prospect, but I did not want to end up spending the rest of my life saying I should have gone to space."

Thus began a trip to Star City in Russia, where the world's first astronaut trained. You see, a space traveller needs to do more than buy a ticket. He/she has to pass every test that a cosmonaut has to go through.

"The first thing was the medical test, which was very painful. As a geek you don't think about what your body can do, but only of what your mind can do. It was very interesting for me to learn that the body is something that responds to training. And the Russians know how to do training. We are physically more capable than we think we are."

For someone who has lived in the western hemisphere all his life, it was quite a culture shock to meet Russians who, though are considered Europeans, don't share too many cultural similarity with the rest of Europe.

"It was incredible. I learnt all kinds of things about Russians. Their language is like a combination of testosterone and ballet. That is actually a basic description of the Russians themselves. Big strong men who like to cry!"

The second shock, which he got, had to do with technology. For someone who was used to the latest in computer equipment, the Russian spacecrafts seemed to be from the Stone Age. "In Star City we had to learn to fly a spaceship. It was an amazing machine, which had an 8-bit processor, which we had to learn to program in octal. You go like memory location, value... Then execute. No, we don't want to get to Tahiti."

In addition to the training at the city, there was the survival training that he had to undergo, which was designed to help them survive a crash landing. Here he got a crash course in Russian bureaucracy. "Technically, you could land anywhere between 51.6 degrees north and 51.6 degrees south. Quite a lot of Siberia and quite a lot of the Pacific Ocean. It was fun, like Boy Scout training. But I told them why not just give us a satellite phone and a GPS. Then it doesn't matter where we land, we will light a fire and have a beer, come pick us up. And the Russians said it was not part of standard equipment. Then, a couple of flights later, a couple of guys from NASA got lost after landing and it became standard equipment."

Seven months after arriving in Star City, it was time for the launch. But before that there were a few "traditions" that had to be followed.

"The crew is not supposed to see the rocket until the day of the launch. They go to great lengths to make sure you don't see it. Also when we are going to the launch pad, we stop in the middle and pee on the right rear tyre of the bus. And that also allows us to stuff some contraband vodka into our suits."

So, after zipping up, it was time to board the Soyuz, which Shuttleworth described as "three men squeezed into the front of a Volkswagen beetle", and blast off.

"The launch is extraordinary because you feel the vibrations but don't hear the noise. I only saw a rocket launch live after being on a rocket. If I had seen it first I would have never set foot in it. You can't actually believe the forces involved!"

Once up in the sky, cosmonauts realise we are probably living on the most beautiful spaceship of all. Shuttleworth is no different. "It is difficult to capture in a photograph the beauty of the earth. Despite everything we have done to rip apart the surface of the earth, you still see it is quite beautiful. The most beautiful things are the jungles and the mountain-desserts, like the Tibetan plateau. You can see the rippling of the crust that is the Himalayas and the rich green of northern India."

Shuttleworth spent 10 days aboard the ISS, during which he did many experiments in micro-gravity and crucially research on drugs for HIV, whose cause he considers very close to his heart as an African. But soon it was time to come back to earth, which, though is the most dangerous part of the mission, is also the most beautiful in a macabre sense.

"Re-entry is unbelievable. You fire your rockets at the opposite end to where you can land. You start at the top of the atmosphere over Nigeria. You are doing 25 times the speed of sound and the earth is just whizzing by. You are seriously moving. Then you have fireworks. You see molten bits from the spacecraft flowing out. At one stage you even have molten metal running across the windows and you see the plasma stream outside. While all this is happening you are experiencing five gees and rotating continuously to lose heat. After the burn phase you don't see anything as the windows are black. So you are just a three-ton rock free falling. You wait and wait for the parachutes to open, if they open. Fifty seconds before touchdown the chutes deploy violently. Then you brace for the crash, and, whack, it is all over!"

ANAND SANKAR

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