Dennis Anthony Tito (born August 8, 1940) is an American engineer and entrepreneur. During mid-2001, he became the first space tourist to fund his own visit to space, when he spent nearly eight days in orbit as a crew member of ISS EP-1, a visiting mission to the International Space Station. This mission was launched by the spacecraft Soyuz TM-32, and was landed by Soyuz TM-31.
Tito was appointed to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power Board of Commissioners during the 1990s and as such he facilitated the 1994 state ruling protecting Mono Lake from excessive water diversions by the city.[4]
Investment career
In 1972, he founded Wilshire Associates, a major provider of investment management, consulting and technology services in Santa Monica, California. Tito serves an international clientele representing assets of $71 billion.[5] Wilshire uses quantitative analytics to analyze market risks – a method Tito is credited with helping to develop by applying the same techniques he used to determine a spacecraft's path at JPL.[3] Despite a career change from aerospace engineering to investment management, Tito remained interested in space.[6]
Dennis divorced from his wife Suzanne Tito during the early 1990s, to whom he had been married since the 1970s.[8][7] They had 2 children together.[9] She had been CFO of Wilshire Associates at the time they relocated into their mansion in Pacific Palisades in 1990 with their children, that they had been building since 1987.[10]
As of 2011 Dennis was married to Elizabeth Pavlova Tito, a Russian investor and Stanford alumna. They lived at Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles.[8]
From 2016 to 2019, Dennis was married to Elizabeth TenHouten.[11][9]
Since 2020, Dennis has been married to Akiko Tito, an engineer, pilot, and investor, who has been interested in spaceflight since childhood.[12][13] She was born in Tokyo, has an economics degree and relocated to New York in 1995, raising a child prior to her marriage to Dennis.[9]
Later,[when?] by an arrangement with space tourism company Space Adventures, Ltd.,[16] Tito joined the Soyuz TM-32 mission which launched on April 28, 2001.[17] The spacecraft docked with the International Space Station. Tito and his fellow cosmonauts spent 7 days, 22 hours, 4 minutes in space and orbited the Earth 128 times.[16] Tito performed several scientific experiments in orbit that he said would be useful for his company and business.[citation needed]
Since returning from space, he has testified at the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation, Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space and the House Committee on Science, Subcommittee on Space & Aeronautics Joint Hearing on "Commercial Human Spaceflight" on July 24, 2003.[18] Ten years after his flight, he gave an interview to BBC News about it.[19]
In February 2013, Tito announced his intention to send a privately financed spaceflight to Mars by 2018,[20] stating that the technology exists already and that the problems that need to be solved are only the rigor of a 501-day voyage psychologically and physically for the human crew.[21][22] However, in November 2013, Tito and other Mars Inspiration team members admitted that their plan was impossible without significant assistance and funding from NASA.[23]
SpaceX Starship’s second commercial spaceflight around the Moon
On 12 October 2022, SpaceX announced that Dennis and Akiko Tito will be on the crew of the second commercial spaceflight of Starship around the Moon.[24][needs update]
See also
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Dennis Tito.
