The view from heaven

Whatever NASA thinks about the space visit of millionaire tourist Dennis Tito, it can hardly deny the event sparks the imagination of millions. Apparently there is a special magic in viewing the earth from above, but for now the American space agency seems to want to reserve that experience for a skilled elite. "It's about life on earth," their website declares of the International Space Station, as if that would make the rest of us more content to stay here, passing up the dream of a lifetime.

It's odd. The NASA Human Spaceflight page makes no mention of Tito's trip this week. On what grounds does he fail to qualify as a significant news figure? Isn't he human? Didn't this count as real spaceflight, since the agency denied him any prior training in Houston?

None of the above. Actually, it's just because his trip was definitely not NASA. Tito paid for the trip with a donation of millions of dollars to the Russian space program. He was given an empty seat alongside two cosmonauts in a Soyuz rocket. The Americans tried to prevent his journey to the space station. Despite this, he arrived there Monday.

NASA's website oversight is cynical public relations. The government doesn't want to be seen as condoning Tito's entrepreneurial space manoeuvre, but knows it will lose popularity points for saying anything negative. Better not to say anything. It's unfortunate, because NASA is a great source of earth and space information on the Web. But this demonstration of sour grapes shows why any medium, a government outlet in particular, must be read or viewed with caution. Presumably the agency doesn't want any more people than necessary knowing that a rich man from California can pay his way into space.

Tito's accomplishment hardly brings space travel out of the domain of the elite. But NASA is showing its puerile side by offering so little response to the multitudes who must be wishing they could do the same as him.

For now we will have to satisfy ourselves with imagining how it would be. If you've ever traveled on a jet and weren't afraid to take a window seat, you'll know the world looks a lot different from high above. I've flown over familiar cities and not been able to identify anything that I saw. We're used to navigating in three dimensions, not seeing the places where we lived laid out like a map.

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