Queens Born Millionaire Astronaut Ready For Blast Off

If all goes according to his plan, he will have spent about $20 million of his own money to live out a lifelong dream riding into the stars and joining the International Space Station.
Tito, a multimillionaire investment tycoon (who heads the Santa Monica-based Wilshire Associates), paid big bucks to the cash-strapped Russian space program for a week-long visit to Alpha, occupying an empty seat along with two cosmonauts on a Soyuz taxi flight.
The 60-year-old entrepreneur has reportedly been training on Russian space training programs.
He told Space.com last Thursday that "Im going to be bolted inside that capsule at Balkonur." This, despite NASA misgivings about the whole deal.
American space officials are suspect, to say the least, of the Russians selling tourist rights to space flights. But Titos credentials are impressive.
The Queens native helped create the landing gears and mechanisms for the Mars and Jupiter spacecrafts.
His dream of heading for the stars is grounded by an odd combination of historical happenstances the financial collapse of the old Soviet Union (which is why he can pay his way on this space mission), and the fact that space travel (just like forecast in the film "2001"), is a commercial as well as an adventure in exploration and inspiration.
But it is also an apparent boyhood dreamone that he has the means to realize.