Low As It Gets

AFP via Spacedaily.com 'reports' below.

Didn't bother to ask the maggot if he thought the world
might be better off if he donated the $$$ to the acquisition
of AIDS drugs for the thousands of Africans who die
every yr. because they are too poor to buy them.

NASA agrees in principle to flight of S. African space tourist

WASHINGTON (AFP) Dec 11, 2001
The US space agency NASA has agreed in principle to allow a South African millionaire to become the world's second space tourist on the International Space Station, a spokeswoman said Tuesday.

Mark Shuttleworth, 28, signed a contract with the Russian Space Agency earlier this month to travel aboard a Soyuz shuttle to the space station in April 2002, for a 20-million-dollar fee.

"NASA and its international partners have agreed in principle to the flight of Mr Shuttleworth, and we are in the process of formalizing that approval," NASA spokeswoman Kirsten Larson told AFP from the agency's headquarters here.

"The fundamental issue for us is that we need a formalized process that we can all agree to, that governs how to select and train people to go to the space station," she added.

"We are almost to the point where we have agreed to these crew criteria with our international partners."

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has thus made a 180-degree turnaround on the issue of space tourism after vehemently opposing until the last minute US businessman Dennis Tito's 20-million-dollar ISS trip.

US officials eventually approved Tito's trip last spring when it became clear that their Russian counterparts were not going to back down.

Shuttleworth, a resident of Cape Town who made his fortune in Internet consulting and developing e-commerce security, is expected to travel to the ISS with Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gidzenko and Italian astronaut Roberto Vittori.

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