WASHINGTON -- Millionaire Dennis Tito's jaunt to the International Space Station is being viewed as "one small step" toward a potential giant leap into future tourist traffic in Earth orbit. Already on the drawing boards are space hotels, gymnasiums, casinos and other facilities. All that is supposedly missing are elbow-to-elbow, super-saver customer flights to space. If all goes as planned, 60-year-old Dennis Tito starts his pay-per-view voyage into outer space on April 28, sitting onboard a Russian Soyuz TM-32 "taxi spaceship" departing the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 3:38 a.m. EDT (07:38 GMT; 11:38 a.m. Moscow time). After eight months of cosmonaut training, and plunking down some $18m, Tito is set for his weeklong stay as a houseguest aboard the International Space Station. But is the traverse by the well-heeled Tito more one-upmanship than kick-starting a true space tourism business? Distant destination ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Earth orbit remains a distant destination, in terms of price, contrasted to other exotic and extreme locales offered by the global, multitrillion-dollar travel and tourism industry. For example, here on terra firma, adventure travel packages for sailing to the Arctic go for $20,000. Crawling up Mt. Everest sells for $70,000. A spin around the world via a small executive jet can put a $150,000 dent in your bank account Despite Tito’s out-of-sight, out-of-pocket costs, space tourism advocates are heralding the mission. "It's really the classic beginning of real space tourism. He is essentially our Neil Armstrong because he’s the first person in history to physically pay for his own trip to space," said John Spencer, head of the Space Tourism Society in Los Angeles, California. "The story of space tourism is a story for our age," he told SPACE.com. Similar in view is Patrick Collins , a professor at the Economic Environment Research Laboratory at Azabu University in Kanagawa, Japan. A long-time student of the evolving space tourism business, Collins said that Tito's flight is a fitting 40th anniversary commemoration of Yuri Gagarin's historic first human flight into Earth orbit in 1961 -- and equally humiliating to the United States. "Ten years after the end of the Cold War, Russia is teaching the United States about capitalism in space," Collins said. Tourism travails ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A successful excursion into orbit by Tito is likely to spur space tourism, said Clinton Rappole, professor and Eric Hilton Distinguished Chair at the Conrad N. Hilton College of Hotel and Restaurant Management at the University of Houston. On the other hand, if the high-flying tycoon is hurt or killed, such an incident could set back tourism in space, Rappole said. "First and foremost, Tito needs to be launched and returned safely," Rappole said. "If he returns safely after having lived on the station 'comfortably' for several days, then a lot will depend on his candid and honest assessment of comfortable," he explained. For example, experiencing a heavy bout of heaving -- many space travelers suffer from nausea -- might color any recounting by Tito of his tourism travails to the public. "Just because he goes up and returns safely to Earth does not necessarily mean he will enjoy it and encourage others to go," Rappole pointed out. "Should Tito be launched safely, lives ‘comfortably,’ returns to Earth safely and proclaims it a wondrous event, then the perception of tourism in space may change," Rappole said. Jerry Mallett, president of the Adventure Travel Society in Salida, Colorado, said a Tito round trip, and others to follow, is sure to bolster public thinking that space tourism is real and a travel option in the future. Like Rappole, Mallett said an accident might damper things, but only temporarily. "I don’t think that would scare people away from it per se. It's like the Mt. Everest situation. You lost a bunch of people up there and it didn’t stop [people from] climbing the mountain. There was just more people wanting to go. Thanks to Deliverance, river running did very well there for a year or two after the movie. I think everybody on the other side feels they are invincible," Mallett said. Adventure travel in 2000 amounted to nearly $240 billion in the United States alone, a figure that includes equipment too. Last year, travel alone tallied up to $115 billion to $120 billion, Mallett said. "Right now, it's hard for any of the public to get real options for space travel," Mallett added. "Tito is unique. If the government or the space agency started opening up some lottery slots, I think there would be a lot of people looking to try and get on those. But right now, there's just no opportunity Reliability up…cost down ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Blasting a rich person into space won't boost the prospects for large numbers of citizens plying to and from Earth orbit anytime soon, said Bob Citron, founder of SpaceHab – a private company that initially studied ways to haul sightseeing tourists in the space shuttle’s cargo bay as a business. "Tito’s flight is a major event in the history of spaceflight," Citron said. "It’s not that significant in the short term and I don’t believe it will speed up massive space tourism by ordinary people. That won’t happen until we develop space voyaging vehicles that are as reliable and as low cost as today’s modern commercial aircraft," he said. Large-scale space tourism will follow when we develop very low cost and very reliable space passenger vehicles, Citron said. At present the shuttle has 0.99 reliability. Routine commercial space tourist trips demand 0.9999 in reliability. Furthermore, the per-pound (-kilogram) price tag for getting to low Earth orbit must be dramatically lowered, he said. "What Tito's flight will do is show that ordinary citizens who are in good physical and psychological condition can fly in space if they can afford the price of a ticket. When we have massive space tourism and millions of people are flying in space in several hundred years from now, Tito’s flight will be one of the major historic milestones during the first century of human spaceflight," Citron said. Promotional rescue ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ While NASA has not exactly put out the welcome mat for Tito's arrival at the International Space Station, some space tourism advocates want the agency to cough up seats for passengers on space shuttle flights. Like they did with the railroads, airmail and communications satellites, the government can help spawn a huge space tourism enterprise, said Apollo 11 Moonwalker, Buzz Aldrin. "I believe the government should stimulate a large-volume space tourism industry. And we can do that by carrying people in the space shuttle," Aldrin said. "To me, there's no reason why two to three people a year can't be trained as observers for shuttle rides," he said. Game show winners, lotteries and other promotional or entertainment selection processes, Aldrin said, could help fill shuttle seats with off-the-street citizens. Aldrin said that NASA and the private sector must focus on the near-term objective of flying "people" in space and thoroughly assess the impact of flying tens of thousands of prospective paying passengers in the future. Shuttle-load of passengers ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Former NASA advanced planner, Ivan Bekey, now of Bekey Designs, a Virginia-based consulting firm, said the space agency should use the space shuttle to develop technologies and procedures for eventual tourism by flying a few "citizen passengers." Bekey said that even if the shuttle could tote 50 people into space, and assuming a marginal shuttle cost of $80 million per flight, a seat would still be pricey -- some $1.6 million each. "At those rates, there would still be about 1,000 people worldwide that would want to go, if current surveys are to be believed," he said. "This would be great public relations for tourism. But I am sure that NASA would rather fall on their sword than to do that, even though the Space Actclearly requires NASA to promote commercial use of space," Bekey said.