One thing no one knows yet though is who will be China's first man in space.

BBC: NEWS | Science/Nature | China space mission 'on track'

The Czech MEP was the first man in space not to be from the US or the Soviet Union.

BBC: Ex-cosmonaut warns over space funding

America's first man in space, Alan Shepard, who later walked on the moon in 1971's Apollo 14 mission, became a millionaire businessman.

CNN: After walking on moon, astronauts trod various paths

But today, the demilitarized town where the first man in space Yuri Gagarin once lived, is open for business, ferrying cosmonauts and billionaires to space while also offering wild spins in a giant centrifuge to visitors who only dream of the great beyond.

BBC: The dated future of Russia��s Star City

That means Mars-bound astronauts will also have to skip out on the ground-based psychological support sessions that astronauts and cosmonauts working on the international space station routinely have just to make sure microgravity has not gone to their heads (Before Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space in 1961, experts were afraid weightlessness might cause schizophrenia, explained one doctor).

CNN: Mars on the brain? Red Planet pioneers to face cosmic mind trip

In 1962, the Mariner II space probe began sending back to Earth man's first information from another planet, Venus.

CNN: Monday,

The man leading the venture is Denis Tito, who paid 20 million dollars to become the first "tourist" in space.

BBC: US private sector hopes to send older couple to Mars

The new man's first brush with Turkey's soldiers came after their coup of 1980, their third in the space of 20 years, when his boss in the transport authority, a retired colonel, told him to shave off his moustache.

ECONOMIST: Charlemagne