American congressmen seem to be seriously interested in the idea of a space expedition in the course of which the spaceship will make flies around Venus and Mars. Several days ago, the Congress's Committee of Science asked NASA to estimate the possibility of realization of such a flight (it is supposed that NASA would also take part in it). It is expected that the flight will start in November 2021 and will last 582 days, and that a married couple will take part in it.

The idea to send a married couple to space first occurred to Dennis Tito, who is known as the first person to fly to space as a "tourist", not a professional astronaut. According to Mr. Tito's initial idea, the expedition was to take place in 2018 and last 501 days. Initially, it was planned to make a rotation only around Mars.

Dennis Tito planned to use a private rocket and spaceship for this project. However, the private non-commercial fund "Inspiration Mars Foundation", which was collecting money for this project, failed to collect the needed sum. There were several other uncertainties as well. Then, Dennis Tito realized that he would hardly be able to bring this project to life without NASA.

He added a flight around Venus to his project, postponed the launch to 2021 and turned to NASA. The year 2021 was chosen because it is planned that by that time, NASA will finish the construction of a spaceship called "Orion" and a heavy launch rocket "Space Launch System". It is on them that Dennis Tito wants to carry out his expedition.

Mr. Tito says that the whole project would cost $ 1 bln. His fund has promised to give $ 300 mln, and the rest, as he hopes, would be allocated by NASA.

At a hearing devoted to this case in the Congress committee, the majority of speakers expressed the opinion that this project is quite realizable. However, Alexander Zheleznyakov from the Russian Academy of Cosmonautics has some doubts about this.

"Quite likely, both the spaceship and the launch rocket will really be ready by 2021," Academician Zheleznyakov says. "But I doubt that NASA would agree to immediately send them to such a long and risky flight without any preliminary tests. The congressmen who are supporting this project do not probably realize to the full how difficult and risky it really is."

Somebody has already called Dennis Tito's project "an interesting interlink" between space missions no further than the Earth's orbit and flights to other planets.

The head of the Congress's commission Lamar Smith is actively supporting Dennis Tito's initiative. Mr. Smith says that NASA has not put forward any interesting ideas for a rather long time.

The US astronautics is now not what it once used to be, and no one else than President Obama and his administration should be blamed for this, Lamar Smith believes. For example, President Obama has cancelled a flight to the Moon in favor of an expedition to an asteroid. However, many experts do not take this asteroid project seriously.

Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the Russian magazine "Voprosy Kosmonavtiki" ("Issues of Cosmonautics") Igor Lisov notes that no representative of NASA spoke at the hearings over Dennis Tito's project:

"The project was presented by people who once used to work for NASA but are now private individuals. I believe that there are practically no chances that NASA would accept this project. At least, NASA's draft budget for 2015 does not mention anything of the kind."

However, the idea of a flight around Venus and Mars is too fascinating to reject it. One year ago, when the first variant of this project was announced, a lot of people offered their candidatures as the "space tourists". Several scientists have also suggested some interesting ideas about how to better protect the crew from space radiation.

Besides, in 2021, Mars and Venus will come close to each other, which does not happen very often, and it would be convenient to make a fight to both planets without spending much fuel. The next such chance will occur only 12 years later.

As for Dennis Tito himself, he considers his project to be a daring challenge, but a quite realizable thing. He does not give up hope that once, officials who have the authority to make his initiative a government project will do that.

Source: Voice of Russia