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U.S. Woman Agrees To Buy First Tongan Space Ticket (Species Coalescence),

U.S. Woman Agrees To Buy First Tongan Space Ticket

NUKU'ALOFA, Tonga, March 25 (Reuters) - Tonga's ambitious plans to launch a space travel industry have taken off with an American woman aviation pioneer signing up to be the South Pacific archipelago's first space tourist.

Wally Funk, who trained with the original Mercury astronauts but never made it into space, has agreed to buy a $2 million ticket for a seven-day stay in polar low-earth orbit, fulfilling her lifetime dream, according to California-based space rocket developer InterOrbital Systems (IOS).

IOS founders Roderick and Randa Milliron said the orbital tourism flights, from a planned spaceport on one of Tonga's 170 islands, are scheduled to begin in 2005.

Advance space ticket bookings are available for a "reduced rate" of $2 million. The price includes a 45-day astronaut training period in Russia and California, a seven-day adventure in low earth orbit and a vacation in Tonga, IOS said.

Funk committed to the project in February, IOS said, adding that experienced supersonic pilot Chalmers "Slick" Goodlin had also been appointed to the IOS board of directors.

"Both Wally's and Slick's levels of experience is unparalleled and invaluable to us. We are elated to have them on the InterOrbital Systems team," Randa Milliron told Reuters.

IOS has been developing its space craft, the Neptune Spaceliner, at a plant in the United States' Mojave Desert, where it began producing rocket engines and space launch vehicles in 1995.

The reuseable rockets being developed can be launched at sea or from a land-based space port and would be able to put two pilots and four tourists into a orbit for up to a week.

Funk, a former flight instructor now in her early 60s, trained last year at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre in Star City, Russia, where she was flown at high altitude at zero gravity.

U.S. millionaire Dennis Tito became the world's first space tourist in April 2001 after reportedly paying $20 million for a seat aboard a Russian rocket to the International Space Station.

A constitutional monarchy with a population of 100,000, Tonga is about 2,000 km (1,250 miles) north of New Zealand.

Its economy is based mainly on exports of agricultural and fish products, tourism, international aid, and remittances from Tongans living abroad.

It has in the past resorted to unorthodox schemes to raise funds, including the sale of passports in the late 1980s, and

00:06 03-25-02

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