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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 acting on a comment reportedly made by Madonna, in Moscow this week for a concern, that she would like to fly to space. Why 2008? “It would be a serious event, considering the TV coverage and the fact that it will coincide with [presidential] elections in the United States and Russia,” Mitrofanov said. The only remaining question: one way or round trip?
Update 9/14 7am: While the Russian Duma did not look favorably on Mitrofanov’s proposal, the head of Roskosmos said he’s be happy to fly Madonna to the ISS, although she would have to wait until 2009 because seats on earlier flights are already accounted for. Still a mystery, though, is exactly what Madonna said during her Russian visit that kicked off this hullabaloo.
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 contact with the disease (even if she wanted to) during her trip.
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 good luck,” according to Interfax.
As you may already know, Ansari has her own web site, where she calls herself “First Female Private Space Explorer & Space Ambassador”. She also has a blog, where her latest entry describes her birthday, spent in quarantine in advance of her flight. Lots of flowers, but limitations on what she can do: “I think I know how Martha Stewart felt in her minimum security prison.”
Ansari doesn’t plan to lounge around the station, looking out the window while listening to music: she’s agreed to be a test subject for four ESA experiments during her stay on the ISS, including studies of radiation effects, bacteria, anemia, and lower back pain.
Finally, Alan Boyle has an extensive interview with Ansari about her upcoming flight, touching on a wide range of issues. About her “ambassador” role: “The most important part of my role as an ambassador is to educate everyone about space and the importance of space, and space exploration and space sciences. One way I imagine doing this through my trip is by recording every second of my experiences, either through video, pictures or audio.” (Well, not every second, we hope; there is that whole space toilet thing we can probably skip.) Ansari also talks about her financial support of Space Adventures’ development of the Explorer suborbital vehicle for space tourism, declining to be pinned down to a start date other than that they “are shooting for” two to three years from now. She also states that the medical condition that grounded Daisuke Enomoto (and thus giving her a chance to fly) is apparently treatable, allowing him another chance to fly at some point in the future.
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 he’s been offered a suborbital ride by Virgin Galactic, in part because he used to be signed to a Virgin-owned label. “So when he [Richard Branson] was coming up with Virgin Galactic he approached people to say, ‘Would you have any interest in going into outer space?’,” Moby said. “And I, of course, said yes.”
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:
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 out over Microsoft, particularly in developing regions like Africa. (It’s not clear what prompted this particular article, since Shuttleworth has been involved with Ubuntu for some time.) What is most interesting about the article is that leads off by noting Shuttleworth’s 2002 flight, but after the second paragraph doesn’t mention it again.
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, since the available seat on the September 2007 flight will be taken by a Malaysian guest cosmonaut (unless the international partners free up a seat by going back to the shuttle to rotate station crews); assuming a six-month training cycle now would be the time to start for a March flight.
The article also contrasts Simonyi with former space tourist candidate Daisuke “Dice-K” Enomoto: a source told RIA Novosti that Simonyi “was remarkably different in his attitude to the flight from Daisuke Enomoto, a Japanese businessman who had failed his medical and appeared to be embroiled in a financial scandal in his homeland.”
Enomoto’s spot on this month’s Soyuz flight was filled by another tourist, Anousheh Ansari; will Simonyi have a similar backup? The article suggests we’ll know soon. “The training center representative said it would be clear in 10 days whether Simonyi would have a backup. ‘The main thing is that he wants to learn more than is taught during the reduced ‘tourist’ course, which does him credit,’ he said.”
It would seem that this issue was definitively settled early this year, when William Shatner made it clear he’s not a Virgin Galactic customer. But since his name still appears as one of several celebrities reportedly flying on SpaceShipTwo, Shatner made it bluntly clear to the British media that he is a bit, well, scared, of flying in space: “I’m interested in man’s march into the unknown but to vomit in space is not my idea of a good time. Neither is a fiery crash with the vomit hovering over me.” (I think in the case of a fiery crash, the vomit won’t be hovering for long, but anyway…) Shatner, who was offered a free ticket from Richard Branson, did note that “I do want to go up but I need guarantees I’ll definitely come back.”
(This report did get a fair amount of play in the entertainment media, including, oddly enough, the North Korea Times. Perhaps the Dear Leader is a big Captain Kirk/T.J. Hooker/Denny Crane fan.)
The article in The Sun also claims that Sigourney Weaver is among those who have booked a trip with Virgin Galactic. However, Weaver said last week she’s not interested, so who knows?
ABC News (that’s Australian Broadcasting Corporation, mate) posted an article earlier this week about the “legal mire” that space tourism is facing. The biggest issue the article discusses is the lack of an official demarcation of space: how high to you have to be to be in space? Says Steven Freeland of the University of Western Sydney: “If we look at space tourism … [people] are going to want a certificate that says ‘I’ve been in space’, not ‘hey you’ve been very high up in the air’.” The most common altitude is 100 km (also known as the von Karman line); that’s the altitude used for the Ansari X Prize competition as well as the official boundary of space in Australian law.
That and other issues (like the definition of “astronaut”) suggest to Freeland that current space law is antiquated and in need of an overhaul to reflect the realities of space tourism, as opposed to the government-run space programs of the 1960s. “You have to have legal certainty [about] what law applies, whether it’s international air law or international law of outer space or a combination of both.”
Sam Dinkin, CEO of SpaceShot, passed along a holiday special the company is running for people who think their best chance of making it into space is through gaming:
This weekend, let’s celebrate people who have less than $200,000 in mad money. SpaceShot is giving away a free play at level 1 with every play for the first 1,000 plays each day starting Thursday 8/31 through Monday, 9/4. If the first thousand plays each day are made at level 1, they can’t lose.
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