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Anousheh Ansari paid $20 million for a seat on a Russian spacecraft, which lifted off this morning in Kazakhstan.
Russian ship launches, bound for station; trip chronicled on blog
01:13 AM CDT on Monday, September 18, 2006
By SCOTT FARWELL / The Dallas Morning News
A telecommunications tycoon from Plano blasted into space aboard a Russian rocket this morning on the first leg of a journey to the International Space Station.
Anousheh Ansari, a 40-year-old Iranian-American, is the fourth person – and first woman – to buy a ticket that cost about $20 million to go into the great beyond.
"It is hard to explain my feelings ... a strange mix of excitement and anxiety," Mrs. Ansari wrote in her blog hours before liftoff. "Strangely enough my anxiety is for those who await me here on Earth. My family ... I know how hard this must be on them. I just want to get the launch behind me and start floating in the wonderful weightlessness of space."
Mrs. Ansari's parents, her husband, Hamid, and other family members watched at the desolate launch site in Kazakhstan this morning as the Soyuz space capsule rose on a plume of smoke and flame, cutting a path through the ether.
On Wednesday, the spacecraft is expected to arrive at the orbiting space laboratory, where Mrs. Ansari will spend the next eight days conducting experiments and writing in her Internet journal at http://spaceblog.xprize .org.
Even though she had always dreamed of traveling to space, the trajectory on Mrs. Ansari's life turned toward the heavens in 1993, when she and her husband were both engineers at MCI.
She suggested they quit their jobs, cash out the $50,000 in their retirement accounts and start a telecommunications company. Seven years later, they sold the business for $750 million.
Mrs. Ansari, the first Iranian to travel to space, said her dream began during sleepless nights on the balcony of her childhood home near Tehran.
"A long, long time ago, in a country far, far away ... there was a young girl who had her eyes fixed on the twinkling stars of the night skies," Mrs. Ansari wrote in her blog. "Back then the air was not so polluted and you could see many stars in the night skies. She would lie in her bed and look deep into the mysterious darkness of the universe and think to herself, What's out there?"
In 2001, Mrs. Ansari and her brother-in-law Amir plunked down more than $2 million to sponsor an audacious space contest modeled after the $25,000 Orteig Prize, which inspired Charles Lindbergh's solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927.
Named the Ansari X Prize, the challenge offered $10 million to any private company that could build a private rocket ship capable of two manned suborbital flights in two weeks.
Iconic aircraft designer Burt Rutan – who co-piloted Voyager, the first aircraft to fly around the world on a single tank of gas – won the contest in 2004 with financial backing from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.
Mrs. Ansari's childhood dream began to take shape Sunday evening as space shuttle Atlantis floated away from the International Space Station and Russian engineers finished fueling the rocket that propelled Mrs. Ansari into space.
She was accompanied by Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin and U.S. astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria.
At a news conference Sunday, Mrs. Ansari, 40, recoiled at the label of "space tourist." She called herself a "spaceflight participant" and said she views herself as an ambassador for attracting private investment to spaceflight.
She said the Russian Soyuz TMA capsule that will carry her to the station was not unlike the first-generation Russian space capsules from decades ago.
"In order to make great leaps in space exploration ... private companies and the government need to work together," she told reporters.
Capt. Lopez-Alegria pointed out that spaceflight is not for the lighthearted, and he said just a few years ago that he was skeptical of private tourists. But he said now it's clear that the Russian space program needs such investment and that without the Russian space program, the U.S. program would suffer.
"If that's the correct solution ... then not only is it good from the standpoint of supporting the Russian space program, but it's good for us as well," he said. Mrs. Ansari's presence in space "is a great dream and a great hope not just for our country but for countries all around the world."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
01:13 AM CDT on Monday, September 18, 2006
By SCOTT FARWELL / The Dallas Morning News
A telecommunications tycoon from Plano blasted into space aboard a Russian rocket this morning on the first leg of a journey to the International Space Station.
Anousheh Ansari, a 40-year-old Iranian-American, is the fourth person – and first woman – to buy a ticket that cost about $20 million to go into the great beyond.
"It is hard to explain my feelings ... a strange mix of excitement and anxiety," Mrs. Ansari wrote in her blog hours before liftoff. "Strangely enough my anxiety is for those who await me here on Earth. My family ... I know how hard this must be on them. I just want to get the launch behind me and start floating in the wonderful weightlessness of space."
Mrs. Ansari's parents, her husband, Hamid, and other family members watched at the desolate launch site in Kazakhstan this morning as the Soyuz space capsule rose on a plume of smoke and flame, cutting a path through the ether.
On Wednesday, the spacecraft is expected to arrive at the orbiting space laboratory, where Mrs. Ansari will spend the next eight days conducting experiments and writing in her Internet journal at http://spaceblog.xprize .org.
Even though she had always dreamed of traveling to space, the trajectory on Mrs. Ansari's life turned toward the heavens in 1993, when she and her husband were both engineers at MCI.
She suggested they quit their jobs, cash out the $50,000 in their retirement accounts and start a telecommunications company. Seven years later, they sold the business for $750 million.
Mrs. Ansari, the first Iranian to travel to space, said her dream began during sleepless nights on the balcony of her childhood home near Tehran.
"A long, long time ago, in a country far, far away ... there was a young girl who had her eyes fixed on the twinkling stars of the night skies," Mrs. Ansari wrote in her blog. "Back then the air was not so polluted and you could see many stars in the night skies. She would lie in her bed and look deep into the mysterious darkness of the universe and think to herself, What's out there?"
In 2001, Mrs. Ansari and her brother-in-law Amir plunked down more than $2 million to sponsor an audacious space contest modeled after the $25,000 Orteig Prize, which inspired Charles Lindbergh's solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927.
Named the Ansari X Prize, the challenge offered $10 million to any private company that could build a private rocket ship capable of two manned suborbital flights in two weeks.
Iconic aircraft designer Burt Rutan – who co-piloted Voyager, the first aircraft to fly around the world on a single tank of gas – won the contest in 2004 with financial backing from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.
Mrs. Ansari's childhood dream began to take shape Sunday evening as space shuttle Atlantis floated away from the International Space Station and Russian engineers finished fueling the rocket that propelled Mrs. Ansari into space.
She was accompanied by Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin and U.S. astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria.
At a news conference Sunday, Mrs. Ansari, 40, recoiled at the label of "space tourist." She called herself a "spaceflight participant" and said she views herself as an ambassador for attracting private investment to spaceflight.
She said the Russian Soyuz TMA capsule that will carry her to the station was not unlike the first-generation Russian space capsules from decades ago.
"In order to make great leaps in space exploration ... private companies and the government need to work together," she told reporters.
Capt. Lopez-Alegria pointed out that spaceflight is not for the lighthearted, and he said just a few years ago that he was skeptical of private tourists. But he said now it's clear that the Russian space program needs such investment and that without the Russian space program, the U.S. program would suffer.
"If that's the correct solution ... then not only is it good from the standpoint of supporting the Russian space program, but it's good for us as well," he said. Mrs. Ansari's presence in space "is a great dream and a great hope not just for our country but for countries all around the world."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Prodea Systems
Anousheh Ansari paid $20 million for a seat on a Russian spacecraft, which lifted off this morning in Kazakhstan.
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