Fortune Smiles on Space Race Sponsor
FYI,
Check out her photo on the web link below.
"Fortune Smiles on Space Race Sponsor"
BBS News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5278190.stm
A young Iranian-born American woman who rallied her wealthy family to
underwrite a $10m (£5.3m) competition for the first private spaceflight
will soon get to experience for herself the thrill of being a space tourist.
On Tuesday, Anousheh Ansari was confirmed as the replacement for
Japanese businessman Daisuke Enomoto as a fare-paying passenger onboard
the next Russian rocket mission to the International Space Station (ISS).
Lift-off for the Soyuz capsule that will carry Mrs Ansari and two
members of the next ISS crew is scheduled for 14 September from the
Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan.
In her quest to fly in space, Mrs Ansari, co-founder of Texas-based
Telecom Technologies, helped seed the development of a private
spaceflight industry by donating $10m for the X-Prize competition, which
was awarded in 2004 for the first pair of suborbital manned flights.
The winning vehicle, called SpaceShipOne, was built by aircraft designer
Burt Rutan and funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.
A commercial version of the ship is under development by Rutan's Mojave,
California-based firm in partnership with Sir Richard Branson's newly
created Virgin Galactic spaceflight enterprise.
The company has sold about 200 tickets for flights, which are scheduled
to begin in 2008 from the Mojave Desert. Mrs Ansari holds a reservation.
She also spearheaded a new family venture called Prodea to develop a
line of air-launched suborbital vehicles in partnership with
Virginia-based Space Adventures, as well as spaceports in the United
Arab Emirates and Singapore to launch them.
More recently, she jumped at the chance to train as a reserve for Mr
Enomoto in the hope of clinching the grand prize of spaceflight: a
10-day trip to the space station.
"Anyway you can fly me, I'll go," she said in an interview last month in
Houston.
In the end, her wait may be far shorter than expected. Mr Enomoto, 35,
was stripped of flight privileges earlier this week for undisclosed
medical reasons.
It was not immediately known if he would remain eligible to fly on a
future mission.
If he is, Mr Enomoto may be just as happy to wait. Russia recently added
a $15m (£7.9m) option to its basic $20m (£10.6m) fare - a 90-minute
spacewalk outside the ISS.
As for Mrs Ansari, she will have to fly without the projects she wanted
to do in space and she may end up having to eat the meals ordered by Mr
Enomoto.
Hopefully, though, she will be able to bring along some of her own clothes.
The Japanese businessman - a young-at-heart science-fiction fan - had
sent ahead his spacesuit: an outfit modelled after cartoon pilot hero
Char Aznable from the Gundam animation series.
--
Mark Reiff <markreiff@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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