Your Friday morning Ansari update

Anousheh Ansari is still writing posts on her space blog, and plans to continue to do so during her stay on the ISS. MSNBC reports that such space blogging, as well as planned podcasts from the station, won’t come cheap: the data/phone link costs $250,000. The X Prize Foundation is picking up the tab for […]

Space tourism and space medicine in the UK

The UK Space Biomedicine Group is holding is 3rd Space Medicine Conference on September 30-October 1 at the National Space Centre in Leicester. The penultimate panel of the conference, according to the program, will focus on “medical issues for space tourism”. The featured speakers include a doctor working for Virgin Galactic, Dr. Julia Tizard, and […]

Ansari update

Ansari talks about training with the Expedition 14 backup crew, speaking warmly about Peggy Whitson and Yuri Malenchenko. The German news agency DPA, meanwhile, has a somewhat odd, even mildly sexist article about Ansari: “Lipstick to hand, womankind will make another giant cosmic leap Monday,” the article starts, then goes on to discuss the […]

Launching Madonna

RIA Novosti reports that a deputy in the Russian Duma has proposed that Russia send pop singer Madonna on a trip to the International Space Station. Alexei Mitrofanov, described as a “flamboyant lawmaker from the ultra-nationalist LDPR party” said that the Russian space agency Roskosmos should act to send Madonna on a 2008 flight, apparently […]

When one letter makes all the difference

A newspaper in upstate New York, the Amherst Times, ran a New York Times article about Anousheh Ansari. Problem is, they made a typo in the headline: “SHE DREAMED OF THE SARS; NOW SHE’LL ALMOST TOUCH THEM”. While it’s entirely possible that she has dreamed of SARS, it’s unlikely she’ll have any chance to make […]

More Ansari coverage

If you haven’t figured it out yet, Anousheh Ansari’s flight is approaching, so the media coverage is ramping up:

First, though, something important: Tuesday is her 40th birthday, and she got birthday greetings, from, among others, Roskosmos head Anatoly Perminov, who “wished her a happy birthday and success in carrying out the flight program and […]

Moby, space (tourist) cadet

The musician Moby has made it clear he’s had an interest in space, whether it’s his choice of album art and song titles or visits to NASA’s Johnson Space Center. Now Moby appears ready to take that giant leap: he told MTV UK that […]

Ansari roundup

In a little less than a week Anousheh Ansari is scheduled to head to the ISS on a Soyuz taxi flight. A sampling of the coverage:

The New York Times offers a basic overview of her interest in space, dating back to her childhood in Iran, and the work supporting the X Prize and the […]

Shuttleworth vs. Microsoft

So what do you do after you take a trip to space? How about take on the world’s largest software company? That’s the gist of a Reuters article about Mark Shuttleworth, the second tourist to visit the ISS, back in 2002. Shuttleworth is now backing a Linux distribution called Ubuntu that he hopes can win […]

Simonyi begins training

RIA Novosti reported Thursday that former Microsoft executive Charles Simonyi has started training for his flight to the ISS. While Space Adventures has not announced a date for Simonyi’s flight, the RIA Novosti report stated that Simonyi would be training for a flight to the ISS in 2007. Presumably this will be in March 2007, […]