KOROLYOV, Russia -- The first tourist in orbit reached his holiday destination on Monday and declared he loves it up in space.
"Welcome aboard!" the International Space Station's Russian commander Yuri Usachev said in cheerful English as a hatch opened, letting 60-year-old California millionaire Dennis Tito and two Russian cosmonauts spring in from their Soyuz capsule.
"I love space!" Tito announced. He grinned enormously and gave a thumbs-up sign as he floated through the space station.
"It was a great trip here. I don't know about this adaptation that they're talking about. I'm already adapted," said Tito, who had paid a reported $20 million fare.
"Dennis has gotten about 10 years younger," said Talgat Musabayev, Tito's commander aboard the Soyuz.
Russian mission control said Tito had been unwell on Sunday and had vomited but had quickly recovered. Motion sickness is common even among professional spacemen, especially on their first day in space.
Tito and the two Russian cosmonauts accompanying him will spend a week as guests of Usachev and his two American crewmates on board the International Space Station.
Usachev and his crew, in red short-sleeved polo shirts, gave boisterous bear hugs to the newcomers, who arrived in baggy Russian space suits. Russian officials said the visiting crew would spend the rest of Monday mainly at leisure.
"I hope Dennis comes home soon, because a cosmonaut's job is so difficult and dangerous," Itar-Tass news agency quoted Tito's girlfriend Dawn Abraham as saying.
The U.S. space agency NASA disapproved of the amateur space buff's trip to the $95 billion space station, saying his presence could prove a dangerous distraction in an emergency.
The financier will not be allowed into U.S. segments of the orbiter without an escort and has had to pledge to pay for anything he breaks.
But Russia says it is a full partner in the space station, and can fill its quota of seats with whomever it wants.
Yuri Semyonov, president of Energiya, the Russian company that builds and flies Moscow's spaceships, told reporters the restrictions placed on where Tito could go in the space station were "of a political character," but said Tito would obey them.
"If our American partners see that it is possible to let their countryman onto their territory, we will not interfere."
Russian space officials say they are already discussing the next candidates prepared to follow Tito on paid flights.
"Commercial flights give us the chance to compensate for budget funds, and we will not turn away from these opportunities," Semyonov said.
Even after NASA gave its grudging approval, computer glitches on the space station had threatened to hold up Tito's arrival. NASA prolonged a visit by Space Shuttle Endeavor to help out while the orbiter's crew improvised a set-up to replace three computers that crashed.
On Sunday NASA cut Endeavor loose, freeing a path for Tito's Soyuz to dock.
The space station is jointly owned by the United States, Russia, Canada, Japan and European countries. Washington is footing the lion's share of the cost, but Moscow -- with unrivalled space station experience from 15 years flying its Mir -- has designed and built many of the key parts.
After years of problems on the aging Mir, Russian officials have not hidden their pleasure in noting that the computer glitches on the International Space Station occurred in the U.S.-built sections, while the Russian modules have worked more or less perfectly.
