Marcus Toivonen is a Finnish man, but not a regular Finnish man. He is the first Finnish man has been closest to the space. Marcus Toivonen is not an astronaut, so how did he got himself to the edge of the space? Read this amazing story of Marcus Toivonen to know how he became the first Finnish man in the edge of the space. You can do it as well.

Marcus Toivonen had a 14-year dream of being the first Finnish person in space, or at least in the edge of the space. Marcus reached his goal by flying to the edge of the space by a Russian MIG fighter. “The project culminated in Russia 20.11.2002, at 12:36 finnish time, when a MIG-25C “Foxbat” fighter raft carrying me reached a flight altitude of 25.000 meters, which is officially called nearspace. Maximum speed during the flight was Mach 2.4 (about 2.860km/h)”, says Marcus in his website.

This kind of project has always a price, but suprisingly this was not as expensive as you would first guess. Flying to the International Space Station is very expensive (millions of dollars), but this project can be accomplished with much smaller budget. According to the website of Marcus Toivonen, he spent around 15.000 euros in total, which is really not much when compared to the real space flights.

Marcus Toivonen did not want to become famous with his project. Instead he just wanted to accomplish his long-term goal. He just wanted to do something he had been dreaming of for years. Marcus did his project together with Incredible Adventures and he has lots of pictures of the project in his website. I kindly ask you to see those pictures in the website of Marcus Toivonen, because I do not have a permission to publish them in my blog (I have not reached Marcus to ask for permission). Pictures you see here are from Incredible Adventures.

Why did Marcus Toivonen go to the edge of the space? Because he had that dream. According to Marcus, one should definitely do his/her best in order to reach goals. It took a long time before Marcus accomplished his project, but as soon as he decided to do it, he did everything that was needed to make it happen.

What a great experience! I wish I could do something similar as well. I am just a little bit afraid to do it. It sounds scary to climb high into stratosphere with an old jet fighter. Anyhow, I just wonder how Orion and Big Dipper would look like from there? Or how the major constellations would look from there.