Explorer Anousheh Ansari brought space down to Earth

 

She is the first to sniff space and declare that it smelt like a burnt almond cookie.

In September, 2006, Anousheh Ansari became the world's first private female explorer and, without realizing it, the voice of the quotidian observer of the unknown.

She brought space down to Earth.

The first Iranian-born person in space described the difficulty of washing her hair in zero gravity and of her "internal organs doing a cha-cha inside my belly" when the Russian space capsule, Soyuz TMA-9, started its orbit of Earth before docking for an eight-day visit to the International Space Station.

 

"What happened with my blog and all the attention I was getting was unexpected," she says during a recent visit to the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto. The daily blog, the first to be written from space, received more than 50 million hits and elicited comments from people around the world.

"A lot of people saw hope," she says. "They were looking at me as one of the most unlikely candidates to be able to do something like this."

In fact, her journey into space is less impressive than the one that got her to the launch pad.

Five years after the Iranian revolution in 1979, she and her younger sister immigrated to the United States with their parents, who wanted their children to get a good education. When they arrived, they lived with an aunt for several months. They were not a wealthy family. "When we left, we basically left with nothing," she says. "We just packed our bags and came."

The transition to American life was not easy. A teenager of 17, she didn't speak a word of English. "Teenagers are a species all by themselves," she says. "They can be cruel, not warm and welcoming at times. I was just in high school to study. I just went to classes and did what I had to do."

She even had to shelve the idea of becoming an astronaut, which had been a dream from childhood. "When I came here, I thought to myself, 'I can be an astronaut now. I'm in America.' That's what I wanted to do - study astrophysics and become an astronaut ... [but] I wasn't a U.S. citizen and I figured, 'Well, what are my chances of becoming an astronaut?' I knew it was not very high, and I knew I had to study something so that I could get a job immediately out of college to support myself and help my family."

So she completed a degree in electrical and computer engineering followed by a master's in electrical engineering. "I had read that electrical engineering and telecommunications, especially, were a grow- ing field," she offers with a shrug in her finely tailored clothing.

In the early 1990s, she persuaded her husband, Hamid, and her brother-in-law, Amir, to help her start Telecom Technologies with their combined savings.

In 2001, the company was bought by Sonus Networks for about half a billion dollars.

Ms. Ansari had still not lost her passion for space. "When we had employee meetings, I would make all my managers dress up in Star Wars costumes, and they would enter the room with Star Wars music playing," she says with only a suggestion of a smile breaking her serious composure.

It was a meeting with Peter Diamandis, chairman and founder of the X Prize Foundation, a non-profit educational organization, that would lead to her space travel. Mr. Diamandis was seeking funding for a competition that encouraged entrepreneurial initiatives to build the first non-government piloted spacecraft. He had heard of her fascination with space.

Ms. Ansari and her family decided to be title sponsors with a donation of $10-million (U.S.). Subsequently renamed the Ansari X Prize, the money was awarded in 2004 to Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and well-known aviation designer Burt Rutan for their Space-

ShipOne.

The family also announced a partnership with Space Adventures Ltd. and the Russian Federal Space Agency to create commercial space vehicles. To understand the training required for space travel, and as a back-up to a civilian adventurer who was scheduled to fly, Ms. Ansari spent six months at Star City, the Russian cosmonaut facility outside Moscow. Already fluent in English, French and her native tongue, Farsi, she had to learn Russian. "Only three weeks before the flight, they told me that the person who was supposed

to fly failed his medical exam, and I had the opportunity

to do it. It was a complete

surprise."

The flight cost her $20-million. "The most memorable moment was when I first saw Earth from Soyuz. It was very emotional. I was crying," she says. "It was beautiful, an amazing image. It has been a year and a half, and I can see it, still, when I am telling you about it. There's almost a warmth coming from Earth. It is sort of glowing, and it's surrounded by darkness. It gives you a certain energy. You can feel that it is alive."

Since her return to Earth, Ms. Ansari has continued her upward trajectory with a guest appearance on Oprah Winfrey's television show and other talk shows, frequent invitations to speak and a memoir under way.

Commercial space travel will have a profound effect on the way people see the planet, she says. "When you're up there, you do look at the world differently. You do see a lot of possibilities for people working together. You see it as one. You're not looking at your country or your hometown. You're looking at Earth."

In 2006, with her family, she started another company, Prodea Systems, which is developing products for "the digital home" that would integrate services through the television, as one example. "The goal is that new technologies and services would be accessible to everyone, regardless of their technological savvy," she explains.

While her motive is entrepreneurial, it is more social than economic, she says. "Technology doesn't recognize any difference in race or religion or age ... and it has made us closer. It has cut through language barriers and distances."

Her schedule is hectic, the 41-year-old admits. "I spend 10 or 12 hours in the office working, and I think, 'Why am I doing this?' And I remember that I am here for a reason. I have a purpose. ...

"I think that 20 or 30 years from now, people will look back at this time as a great era of evolution for our species."

SARAH HAMPSON

Source

Rivals race for UAE launch space

Virgin Galactic and Space Adventures eye Ras Al-Khaimah as potential base for suborbital tourism flights

Rival space tourism ventures Virgin Galactic and Space Adventures could go head-to-head over plans to launch suborbital flights from the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Virgin chairman Sir Richard Branson says Virgin Galactic will talk with authorities from the northernmost emirate Ras Al-Khaimah, where Space Adventures already has spaceport development plans in place.
“We are going to have discussions over the next week with the people who have approached us. It is a perfect region from which to operate flights and if discussions go well, it’s quite likely the UAE will see space needle Virgin Galactic flights from here in the not-too-distant future,” said Branson, in Dubai last week for the launch of Virgin Atlantic’s service from London Heathrow.
Space Adventures in February announced plans to develop a commercial spaceport in Ras Al-Khaimah to add to other potential spaceport locations in Asia and North America.
The venture says the Ras Al-Khaimah spaceport development project will cost at least $265 million with shared investments by Space Adventures and the government of Ras Al-Khaimah and unspecified other funding. The UAE Department of Civilian Aviation has cleared suborbital spaceflights.
First flights for Virgin Galactic’s suborbital service will be from Mojave airport in California before moving to its preferred centre of operations in New Mexico. Virgin Galactic’s network of potential future spaceports includes the north of Scotland or Sweden, Ras Al-Khaimah and Australia.
Virgin Galactic president Will Whitehorn says the space shuttle design for SpaceShipTwo (SS2) is frozen with construction of the commercial prototype expected to start this year. “We have taken, for commercial reasons, the deliberate decision of not unveiling the design until early next year,” says Whitehorn.
Virgin Galactic has increased the size of the SS2’s carrier vehicle, White Knight 2, to the size of a Boeing 757, while SS2 itself will be the size of a large-cabin Gulfstream IV business jet, designed to allow space tourists to experience weightlessness earth from space and spectacular views.
Whitehorn says that so far $13.1 million has been paid in deposits by 157 prospective customers.

Private-spaceflight bill signed into law

WASHINGTON - President Bush gave suborbital space companies an early Christmas gift on Thursday by signing a bill that helps open the way for commercial tourism on the final frontier.

The Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act, or H.R. 5382, puts a clear legislative stamp on regulations already being formulated by the Federal Aviation Administration. More significantly, the law would eventually let paying passengers fly on suborbital launch vehicles at their own risk.

The age of commercial space travel got its start this summer with SpaceShipOne's first private-sector spaceflights. Since then, hundreds of would-be tourists, including William Shatner of "Star Trek" fame and "Alien" actress Sigourney Weaver, have voiced interest in taking their own suborbital space trips aboard the successors to SpaceShipOne, which may be ready for flight in 2007 or 2008.

The backers of H.R. 5382 said the legislation was needed to reassure potential investors, such as Virgin Group billionaire Richard Branson, that they would not face crippling lawsuits in an inherently risky business.

Space policy consultant James Muncy, who has been following the legislation's up-and-down course closely, explained that the law would help the infant suborbital industry "get through the 21st-century equivalent of the barnstorming era."

Congressional staff members said Bush signed the bill on Thursday without fanfare. The FAA now has 12 months to draw up a new set of draft regulations that would provide for passenger flights. Final regulations would take effect six months later.

Safety concerns
H.R. 5382's trip through Congress to the White House was not a smooth one: The legislative language was the result of months of negotiations, and the bill didn't win final congressional passage until the final minutes of the session on Dec. 8.

The FAA's role in suborbital spaceflight safety was a key sticking point: Under the terms of the legislation, the FAA would regulate the industry over the next eight years primarily to protect the uninvolved public and the public interest. The agency would start regulating space vehicles to ensure crew and passenger safety only if the operation of those vehicles resulted in death, serious injury or a dangerous close call.

Beginning in 2012, the FAA could regulate suborbital spaceships however it saw fit.

The bill's backers said the eight-year period would give spaceship developers more freedom to experiment and also allow them to generate revenue by taking on passengers, as long as those passengers knew exactly what they were getting into.

That two-step regulatory regime rubbed some House Democrats the wrong way. During last month's floor debate, Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., said the legislation could encourage a "tombstone mentality," in which regulators would have to stand by until someone got killed or seriously hurt. Nevertheless, the bill was resurrected and approved by the House, 269-120, on the last full day of November's lame-duck session.

Final consideration in the Senate had to wait until an even later mini-session in December, which was required in order to approve an intelligence reform bill. The spaceflight bill went virtually unmentioned on the Senate floor, but the behind-the-scenes debate continued up to almost the last minute.

Firm opposition from even one senator could have stymied the bill, and if the Senate had not acted before ending its session, the legislation's backers would have had to start from scratch next year — potentially delaying the industry's development.

In the end, the legislation was tacked onto a package of House bills that were approved by unanimous consent in the Senate.

'Great victory'
The bill's sponsor, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., said in a press statement that the legislation's passage was a "great victory for the future of America's space efforts."

“The people who will invest the type of big dollars necessary to make this a major new step in mankind’s ascent into space have been waiting for the government to lay down the regulatory regime and set the rules of the game, and this is the first major step toward doing that,” he said.

MSNBC special report
The new space race


Approval in the Senate came as a surprise even to some of the bill's biggest backers. When informed that the legislation had actually passed, Muncy responded with a mild expletive of wonderment.

"Never watch sausage or legislation being made," he told MSNBC.com. "It's been a long, tortuous road."

After collecting his thoughts, Muncy paid tribute to officials at the FAA and the Department of Transportation, as well as members of Congress and their aides.

"Congress is clearly saying that it doesn't want to be a barrier," he said. "It wants to open doors and fly the American public into space."
© 2007 MSNBC Interactive

We must escape Earth, warns Hawking

Mankind will need to leave planet Earth to ensure the long-term survival of the species, theoretical physicist Professor Stephen Hawking warned today.

Prof Hawking said that space-rockets propelled by the kind of matter/antimatter annihilation technology used in Star Trek would be needed to colonise hospitable planets orbiting other stars.

And he disclosed his own ambition to go into space, and appealed to Virgin tycoon Sir Richard Branson - who is planning a "space tourism" venture - to make his dream come true.

Prof Hawking was speaking ahead of the presentation to him later today of Britain's highest scientific award, the Royal Society's Copley Medal, previously granted to Charles Darwin, Michael Faraday and Captain James Cook.

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that scientists may be within 20 years of reaching his prediction in A Brief History of Time that mankind would one day "know the mind of God" by understanding all the laws which govern the universe.

And he said that this knowledge may be vital to the human race's continued existence.
"The long-term survival of the human race is at risk as long as it is confined to a single planet," he told Today.

"Sooner or later, disasters such as an asteroid collision or nuclear war could wipe us all out. But once we spread out into space and establish independent colonies, our future should be safe.

"There isn't anywhere like the Earth in the solar system, so we would have to go to another star.

"If we used chemical fuel rockets like the Apollo mission to the moon, the journey to the nearest star would take 50,000 years.

"This is obviously far too long to be practical, so science fiction has developed the idea of warp drive, which takes you instantly to your destination.

"Unfortunately, this would violate the scientific law which says that nothing can travel faster than light.

"However, we can still within the law, by using matter/antimatter annihilation, at least reach just below the speed of light.

"With that, it would be possible to reach the next star in about six years, though it wouldn't seem so long for those on board."

The science fiction series Star Trek has used matter/antimatter annihilation as an explanation for the warp drive which powers spaceships like the Enterprise through vast distances in short periods of time.

But in reality, some scientists believe that the radiation produced when matter and antimatter are brought together and destroy one another could in fact one day be used to accelerate craft to close to the speed of light.

Prof Hawking today said that his own ambition was to take part in a more conventional form of space travel.

"My next goal is to go into space," he

said. "Maybe Richard Branson will help me."
BBC news